


Steel

by Edonohana



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Dimension Travel, Dragon Riders, Hurt/Comfort, Ice Age AU, Multi, Orgy, Psychic Wolves, Sex Pollen, Shadows of the Apt AU, Undead Owen Harper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:00:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26116846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/pseuds/Edonohana
Summary: “It’s not sex pollen,” said Ianto. “I can hear a voice in my head. He says his name is Llefelys and he’s pleased to meet me.”“You’re hearing a... telepathic Welsh sex alien?” Owen asked.“No,” said Jack. “A telepathic Welsh dragon.”
Relationships: Gwen Cooper & Jack Harkness & Owen Harper & Ianto Jones & Toshiko Sato, Gwen Cooper/Jack Harkness/Owen Harper/Ianto Jones/Toshiko Sato
Comments: 9
Kudos: 32
Collections: Alternate Universe Exchange 2020





	Steel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sholio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/gifts).



> NOTE: The requested characters don't die and there is no on-page character death, but in an alternate timeline, an alternate version of Owen died (and was not resurrected) before the story begins.
> 
> The violence warning is for some medical-type descriptions of injuries.

They were eating again. It was incredible how much time people spent eating. Every couple hours, like clockwork. Really, it was like they did it just to frustrate Owen.

Ianto and Gwen were sharing a meat feast pizza, lifting steaming slices until the clinging strands of cheese snapped, and washing it down with beer. Tosh was absently eating a curry with one hand while scanning the latest bit of alien whatever to fall through the Rift, a glittering, looping thingamabob. Jack was stretched out like a Roman Emperor with his head on Ianto’s thigh, eating a kebab in a distinctly suggestive manner.

All that food going into mouths with working tastebuds, then into their fully functioning digestive systems, where it gave them strength and energy, plus matter to be converted to muscle and fat. Eating wasn’t just about enjoyment and sustenance, it actually changed the substance of your body. Unless, of course, you couldn’t eat and had a body that would never change again, except to accumulate injuries.

The one that aggravated him the most was Tosh. She’d poured herself a glass of water, then forgotten it. Owen would kill to be thirsty again, and gulp down a glass of cold water till his teeth ached and a needle of pain went through his forehead. 

“Tosh, are you sure that isn’t just a necklace for someone with an enormous neck?” Gwen asked. “The things that fall through the Rift can’t all be dangerous or useful. I expect some are alien dish towels or shoe horns. Or jewelry. It’s quite pretty.”

Tosh put down the scanner and lifted the artifact, examining it with the same serious consideration that she’d given to its scan readout. Once it was stretched out between her clever hands, Owen could see that it _was_ pretty, a delicate net of silver strands studded with clear hard droplets. Like a spiderweb with dew on it. 

“I don’t think it’s purely decorative,” Tosh replied. “The scanner’s detecting an epsilon charge. That’s a byproduct of… Well, lots of things actually, but they all involve spatial positioning. It might be a wearable GPS device.”

“It’s awfully big,” said Ianto. “Though like Gwen said, it might fit an alien.”

“If you stopped thinking of it as a necklace and started thinking of it as a harness, it could fit a human,” said Jack.

“A harness?” Tosh looked appalled. “You mean for a slave?”

“Ooh, much kinkier than I was thinking,” said Jack approvingly. “I meant as bondage wear. It wouldn’t fit me, my chest is too broad. But on someone a bit slighter…”

“Don’t look at me,” said Ianto. “At least, not until Tosh figures out whether it’ll make you go up in flames.” As Jack began to smile, Ianto said, “Not like that.” 

“I should think it’d be too small for Ianto,” said Gwen, glancing from him to the mass of glittering strands in Tosh’s lap. “It might fit me. I bet Rhys would fancy that.”

Owen fancied it too. He could imagine her wearing nothing but silver strands and crystal drops. It would reveal everything, and make her look like a present to be very carefully unwrapped. If he could still get a hard-on, that image would have given him a massive one. He might even have to quietly step out to the loo to have himself a quick wank.

Now, of course, his cock was as dead as the rest of him. No more wanks. No more watching someone strutting about in a get-up to highlight that the rest of them was naked, for his eyes only. No more doing it himself. He’d dated a bloke for a while who’d liked him to wear a black leather collar and bracers while they fucked. And once Diane had surprised him by opening her coat and showing him that she had nothing underneath. No more of that, ever again.

Jack set down his kebab skewer and waved a lordly hand. “Owen, would you pass me that beer?”

The spiky knot of frustration and jealousy and bitterness inside of Owen expanded, pushing words out of his mouth. “Why don’t you make tea boy fetch it? That’s what he’s good for, passing out drinks.”

Ianto bristled. “I do quite a bit more than that.”

“Ianto’s got his hands _and_ thigh occupied,” said Jack. “Tosh is working, Gwen is eating, and I’m _very_ comfortable. You’re doing nothing, so that leaves you.”

It was just like Jack to phrase it like that, rather than pointing out that the beer was within reach of Owen but not of the rest of them.

Owen stood up, leaving the beer untouched. “Think I’ll go check on the Weevils. They’re better company.”

A strong gust of wind knocked over the beer bottle, sent Jack’s half-eaten kebab rolling off his plate, and upset Tosh’s water glass. Myfanwy’s leathery wings beat rapidly as she circled so low that Owen had to duck. 

“Myfanwy, what do you want?” Ianto asked. “Chocolate? I have a lovely bar, very dark—”

The pterodactyl’s viciously sharp beak snatched the alien necklace from Tosh’s lap. Tosh jerked back, letting out a startled yelp. Myfanwy’s long neck whipped upward as she flung the artifact into the air. It dropped down neatly over her beak and head. She landed on the floor and stretched out her wings. The artifact _moved_ , molding itself to her body and encircling the bases of her wings to form something that was, in fact, very much like a decorative harness.

“It _is_ meant to be worn,” said Ianto. “I wonder if it would do that for us.”

“Looks quite fetching on her,” Jack remarked. 

“Remind you of an ex?” Gwen inquired, grinning. 

But Tosh looked alarmed. “We’d better get it away from her. I still don’t know what it does.”

Ianto nudged Jack, who rose gracefully to his feet. Ianto stood up. He’d produced a chocolate bar, apparently out of thin air, and unwrapped one end of it. Holding it out, he approached Myfanwy, crooning, “Tasty dark chocolate, infused with orange…”

Myfanwy nipped off the unwrapped part and gulped it down. Ianto handed her the rest of it. She lifted one foot to tease at the wrapping. While she was occupied with that, he took hold of the harness. 

Tiny sparks of light appeared within the clear beads. 

“Hurry up, Ianto,” Owen said. “Look at it!”

“I can’t find any clasps,” he said. “And it won’t go over her head now.”

The lights began to spin, casting flickers across everyone’s faces. 

“Leave it!” Jack said sharply.

“It might hurt Myfanwy,” Ianto said. “I’ve almost—”

Owen hurried forward. Anything that could hurt a pterodactyl could kill a man. A living man, anyway.

“Get back,” Owen said. “I’ll take it off her.”

But Ianto didn’t let go. That stubborn bastard instead planted his feet like he was making a last stand. “Don’t crowd her. You know she hates that.”

The lights were flashing like an alarm now. Owen felt certain that was exactly what they were. “Get _back_ , Ianto.” 

When he didn’t, Owen gave him a shove. Ianto hung on tight with one hand and shoved back with the other. “ _You_ get back.”

Myfanwy let out a screech. Angry? Excited? Owen didn’t speak pterodactyl, and despite Ianto’s claims, he didn’t either.

“Stop it, you idiots,” said Gwen. 

In his best king-of-the-hill voice, which even Owen had to admit was quite good, Jack commanded, “Both of you! Let go!”

“Back off!” Tosh shouted. “The epsilon charge is—

Everything went white.

 _That’s it, then,_ Owen thought. _The end. Again. At least this time it’s not dark._

But if it was the end for him, then it was the end for Ianto, too. Owen tried to curl himself round the necklace. Maybe he could absorb the detonation himself…

That was when he realized that time might seem to slow in a crisis, but not _that_ much. If he could still think, he wasn’t dead. More dead. 

There was nothing but white light, not blinding but all-encompassing. When he tried to speak, he couldn’t hear his own voice. He thought he could still feel his palm on Myfanwy’s back and his other hand gripping Ianto’s shirt-front, but he wasn’t certain of it. His ability to feel was much more about visual feedback and cognitive awareness than the actual sensation of touch. For all he knew, he could be standing there (if he even was standing) with one hand open and one curled into an empty fist. Ianto and Myfanwy might be… gone.

But no. He could feel something, after all. Ianto had his wrist in what had to be a death-grip, for Owen to be able to feel it without any other cues. And when Owen pushed down with his open palm, he met immediate resistance. 

Whatever was happening, it seemed like they were all in it together. 

Ianto clutched at Owen and Myfanwy. Without the input of most of his senses—smell and sound were gone, taste didn’t apply, and there was nothing to see but white—he focused on touch. He had to focus on _something_. It was that or panic. And he was not going to panic, no matter how much this was reminding him of the white flash that had signaled the start of the attack on Torchwood One.

So: touch. He couldn’t feel his feet on the ground, which was alarming. But he wasn’t floating unmoored in space. His shirt and vest were pulled tight against his back, since Owen had grabbed a fistful of the front. Good. Owen was holding on to him. And Ianto still had his left arm wrapped around Myfanwy’s leathery neck. He could feel the texture of her hide, dry and rough and room temperature, which meant it seemed to have no temperature at all. He could even feel her pulse, though he had no idea what its rate was supposed to be. Owen might know.

And he could feel Owen’s wrist. The protruding bones at the joint. The no-temperature skin. No pulse. What had once been painful reminders of just how much Owen had lost were now comfortingly familiar: at least Ianto knew it was him. And Ianto had no intention of letting him go, no matter how much of a prat he’d been a moment ago. 

The white light scattered, becoming sparkles and flashes illuminating a space and figures. As the light distilled down to the same spinning flecks that had started the whole thing, Ianto was enormously relieved to see the Hub, and Jack and Gwen and Tosh and Owen—how had Owen let go without Ianto noticing?

The spinning lights died away. Ianto was still clutching Myfanwy and Owen. And another Owen was standing in front of them. The Owens stared at each other.

“Bloody hell!” Owen—his Owen, for lack of a better name—exclaimed.

Gwen stepped forward, as fierce as he’d ever seen her, raising her arms in a defensive gesture.

Ianto—another Ianto—came in with a tray. Ianto had just enough time to notice, with the same sort of ward-against-madness hyperfocus with which he’d memorized every bone in Owen’s wrist, that the containers of steaming liquid on the tray were not tea cups or coffee mugs but something like sake cups and that the wafting scent was distinctly savory, before the other Ianto took one look at him and dropped the tray. 

Something vast and dark rose up behind the other Torchwood team, as if startled by the noise. It was about the size of Myfanwy, with patterned wings and antennae. It hovered in the air, its wings beating rapidly. Myfanwy flew up to join it. They seemed to inspect each other, then flew off to circle around high overhead in what Ianto hoped to God was a companionable manner. 

“You have a giant moth,” said Ianto, and felt immediately foolish. He’d seen much stranger things than that. 

“You have a pterodactyl,” said Jack. “Is it your special friend? Our Ianto helped us catch Blodeuyn, and he’s always feeding her tidbits. How about more kadith for all of us, Ianto? _My_ Ianto.”

The way he hit that “my” made Ianto feel hot. Pink stained the other Ianto’s cheekbones as he swept the broken cups back onto the tray, then snatched up a cloth to clean up the spill. He had to be incredibly flustered, because he’d grabbed someone’s scarf instead of a dishcloth. But there he was, on his hands and knees, mopping the floor with a handful of silk.

Ianto could understand that, and the assiduous way the other Ianto was scrubbing. When you were shocked or upset or just needed time to think, there was nothing like a household task to give you room to settle your mind and put your inner house in order. But seeing this other version of himself doing the exact same thing was distinctly unsettling. Here in this place of wonders, what was this Ianto doing? Fetching refreshments. Scrubbing the floor. Another world, and Ianto was still the tea boy.

“Kadith?” Gwen exclaimed. She hadn’t lowered her arms, but she didn’t look awkward; she looked poised and ready, like a cat crouched over a mousehole. “They’re shapeshifting aliens! Or illusion casters! Why would they look like us unless they wanted us to welcome them so they could stab us in the back?”

Tosh, who had been stealthily waving an alien artifact at them, shook her head. “No trace of alien DNA. Jack, do you sense any illusion-casting?”

Jack shook his head. “Spines down, Gwen. It’s perfectly safe. They’re from another dimension, that’s all. Their pterodactyl was wearing a dimensional harness. They’re versions of Owen and Ianto from a version of Torchwood in another universe, where things went a bit differently, or always were a bit different—enough for them to have a pterodactyl instead of a moth, at least. Or do you have a moth, and you just didn’t bring it?” 

“No moth," said Ianto. "Just Myfanwy.”

Gwen lowered her arms, but she didn’t step back. The other Ianto gathered the ruined scarf, the broken cups, and the tray, and retreated with them. Tosh’s eyes lit up, and she began fiddling even more intently with her artifact.

Neither Owen said a word. Other than that first exclamation, they’d both been silent—uncharacteristically so, at least in his Owen’s case. (Ianto couldn’t think of a better way to refer to him. His Owen, minus the double entendre.) They’d just stood staring at each other. Ianto had noticed, but hadn’t thought anything of it; after all, he was staring at the other Ianto, and the other Ianto was desperately scrubbing to avoid staring at him. But now that Ianto looked more carefully, he saw that both Owens had the most extraordinary expression: curious and bitter and hopeful, all at once.

Ianto couldn’t tell from this distance if the other Owen was breathing. He supposed not, given that the Owens both had a sign hanging over their heads reading _Did you lose what I lost?_

“The dimensional harness,” Ianto said, after an uncomfortable silence. “How do we use it to get back?”

“You haven’t used it before?” asked Jack.

“It came through the Rift. We didn’t know what it was. Myfanwy put it on and it fitted itself to her.” Ianto decided to skip the part where he and Owen had fought over it, and smoothly concluded, “Owen and I were trying to get it off her when it started sparkling. Next thing we knew, we were here.”

“If it fit itself to her and she used it, then it’s tuned to her,” said Jack. “That means it won’t work for you. Do _not_ try to put it on and travel yourself—it’ll scatter your atoms across the universe. Just grab on to her when it starts sparkling again, and back you’ll go.”

“Myf!” Ianto called. 

Myfanwy and the moth—Blodeuyn—continued to swoop and dart overhead. Ianto wasn’t an expert in pterodactyl body language, let alone giant alien moth body language, but they looked like they were having the time of their lives.

“It takes twenty-four hours to recharge,” said Jack. “We can always fetch her back down by then if she hasn’t worn herself out. Until then, I’m at your service.”

The other Ianto returned with the tray and another set of steaming cups, plus plates of assorted snacks. 

“Let’s go to the conference room,” said Jack. 

As they all headed for it, Ianto saw that Gwen had a sword strapped to her back. Giant moths. Swordfighter Gwen. Well… maybe that part wasn’t so strange. 

The other Ianto shifted the tray to one hand with an enviable deftness so he could open the conference room door. Ianto, who couldn’t help fixating on everything his alternate self did, had several thoughts in quick succession:

_I could do that if I practiced. I’d fill the cups with cold water at first…_

_Why did this Ianto decide to learn to make that graceful switch to balancing a tray of steaming cups on one hand?_

_Some kind of game between him and Jack? Jack was close enough to open the door for him, but hadn’t even reached for it._

“Oi! Why do you lot always shut the doors behind you? Just to show off that you can open them?” The other Owen was glaring at his entire team. Ianto knew his Owen well enough to distinguish between play-anger and habitual crankiness and actual upset, and this Owen sounded genuinely angry. 

“It’s just habit, Owen,” said Tosh. Ianto recognized her tone too, the nervous apology and reassurance he’d heard so often from his Tosh when she caught Owen watching her eat or doze off. “I’ll leave them open for you.”

Ianto couldn’t help glancing at his Owen, who looked absolutely sick. How damaged must this Owen be if he couldn’t even twist a door knob? Had he broken _all_ his fingers in an accident or fight or fit of nihilistic despair?

Ianto's Owen stuck close to his side and sat next to him, scowling like he was daring someone to call attention to it. Ianto wished he could give him a pat on the shoulder, but Owen probably wouldn’t feel it and in the mood he was in, was liable to break Ianto’s fingers if he tried it.

Gwen moved with perfect eerie grace to a stool that gave her a view of the entire room and the door. Tosh glanced from Owen to Owen, visibly uncertain, then seemed to throw her mental hands in the air and took the seat beside Gwen. 

Jack sprawled comfortably in the chair beside Ianto, close enough to fill the space between them with his body heat. That had the usual effect on Ianto’s body, but his mind wasn’t half so sure about it. Ianto knew perfectly well that his Jack would be disappointed if Ianto didn’t shag the other Jack, and it seemed like the other Jack felt the same way. 

In other circumstances, Ianto would have jumped at the chance, and looked forward to re-telling—and re-enacting—it with his own Jack later. But between his Owen’s palpable upset, the unsettling undercurrents among the other team, and his uncertainty about this Jack, Ianto had no intention of letting himself get whisked into a closet or office or secret passageway or unused Weevil cell or—well, anywhere. 

The other Ianto passed out the steaming little cups. They were filled with a translucent ocher liquid, like weak tea without milk, but with a salty, savory aroma. It was some kind of consommé. Clam, maybe. 

Ianto registered the number of cups a split second before his counterpart set a pair down before both the Owens. 

“Oi!” said his Owen. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“No…?” said the other Ianto.

The other Owen picked his up in a hand that worked just fine and took an appreciative sip. To the other Ianto, he said, “Not bad, door boy.”

A glance of complete bafflement passed between Ianto and his Owen. And then the Weevil alarm went off. 

Everyone jumped up, Jack with his usual cool stylishness in the face of danger and Gwen with that uncanny grace. The other Ianto stood there looking awkward and embarrassed, while the other Owen seemed both furious and ashamed. 

Tosh lunged for the video screen. She hit a switch, and it lit up with a split-screen view of the Hub. There were no Weevils in sight, but the cells were all empty.

“Dammit,” muttered Jack. “They’re out, but where are they?”

“Owen, Ianto— _my_ Ianto and Owen—” said Jack, and this time the _my_ clearly meant _my team_ — “Stay here. Tosh will guard you.”

Tosh gave a brisk nod, then shot an apologetic glance at her Owen. She opened a locker, removed a steampunk-looking gun, and stepped in front of them, facing the door.

“I can fight,” said Ianto. 

“I can fight too,” said Owen, giving Ianto a _don’t you dare say anything_ glare. “In fact, I don’t even need to. I’m King of the Weevils!”

“Weevils?” Tosh repeated blankly. “This is the Wolf alarm.”

On the view screen, Ianto saw movement in the autopsy room. A piece of the floor was levered up, and Weevils began crawling up out of the hole. 

“Weevils!” Owen shouted, pointing.

“What a thing to say,” snapped Gwen. “I’m married to a Weevil!”

“What?” Ianto began, but Jack’s shout interrupted him.

“Battle stations! Snap to it! Other Owen, can you use a stun gun?”

“Of course I can!” Owen exploded. “I’m not _that_ fragile!”

The other Ianto reached into the same locker and handed a stun gun to Owen. The other Owen’s gaze followed this with the bitterness Ianto was all too familiar with from his Owen. Then, without offering a gun to Ianto, the other Ianto opened the door, holding it for Jack and Gwen to run through.

Ianto gritted his teeth, trying not to take it personally. The other Ianto was still just the butler, so of course everyone assumed Ianto was too. He grabbed a stun gun from the locker and followed Jack and Gwen, with Owen at his side. 

He had the frustrating sense that understanding of… something… was hovering just outside of his grasp. The other Owen could drink and hold a cup, but he couldn’t fight or open doors. If here they called Weevils Wolves, then here Weevil must mean something else. If Gwen was still married to Rhys, maybe it meant manager? 

But he had no time to ponder that. They all reached the main area at the same time the Weevils did. There was a whole pack of them, rapidly fanning out through the Hub, snarling and slavering, fangs bared and claws out. 

“I’ll have them all back in their cells in a second. Watch this.” Owen waved Gwen and Jack back, and stepped confidently forward to do his King of the Weevils thing. 

And that was when at least a few pieces of the puzzle fell into place in Ianto’s mind. “Owen, no!”

He grabbed Owen and yanked him aside just as the nearest Weevil lunged for Owen’s throat. Owen staggered, unprepared, but Ianto was ready. He whipped around and jammed the stunner into the back of the Weevil’s head. It dropped twitching to the floor.

“They’re not our Weevils!” Ianto said. “Your trick won’t work on them.”

“Yes, got it,” said Owen. He stunned a Weevil bearing down on Ianto. 

Light flickered over Jack’s back, then became dragonfly wings. There were two pairs of them. The clear panes were separated by an intricate pattern of black veins, like a stained glass window. He rose into the air, wings buzzing into a translucent blur. 

“Bloody hell,” Owen said. “Jack has wings.”

“Of course he has wings,” said Gwen. “He’s a Cicada.”

She drew her sword and lifted her arms in the same defensive gesture. Bone-white blades sprang out from her forearms. She plunged into the fray, slashing about with all three blades with a deadly grace. Weevils fell before her. 

Jack darted about in the air, his coat billowing about him, using something like a truncheon to hit the Weevils over the head. He was magnificent. Ianto regretted that he couldn’t just watch Jack fly, but was distracted by having to fight for his life.

Owen and Ianto fell into a back-to-back formation, fighting with their stun guns. But the Weevils kept on coming. Out of the corner of his eye, Ianto saw that a group of them were headed straight for the conference room. 

Owen noticed at the same time. “Tosh!” And, a beat later, “Me! And you. Sort of.”

They ran to intercept the attacking Weevils, but got there just after the Weevils had broken down the door. Tosh stood small and determined behind her big, unwieldy gun, firing in short bursts. Every time she fired, a Weevil dropped. 

But she could only shoot one at a time. More Weevils crowded past, trampling their own fallen and pouring into the room. 

“Tosh!” Owen shouted. “Ianto! We’re coming!”

Behind Tosh, the other Ianto and Owen were backed up against the wall. Neither of them were armed. The other Ianto raised his hands, palms out in surrender. 

“Ianto!” Owen yelled. “No! They’ll rip you apart!”

Light flashed from the other Ianto’s palms and struck a pair of Weevils. They collapsed, the front of their shirts blackened and smoking. Another Weevil lunged at the other Ianto from the side, but the other Owen grabbed the tea tray and smashed him over the head with it. 

A moment, a lifetime passed in the no-time blur of combat: Tosh shooting, Owen and Ianto stunning, the other Ianto shooting light from his palms, and the other Owen laying about every which way. 

And then it was over. They all stood panting and gasping over a bunch of unconscious or dead Weevils. 

The Owens and the Iantos looked at each other, and the other Ianto gave a polite cough. “I think our introductions may have missed some things.”

A voice rose up, making Ianto jump. It was Jack’s, but with a peculiar reverberating quality that made it impossible to mishear or ignore. “Everyone! Quick, to the autopsy room! Gwen’s hurt!”

They ran out. Once they were outside the conference room, light flickered over the other Ianto’s back, and he took to the air on wings similar to Jack’s, though he had one set of large ones and a smaller set below them rather than four of equal size. 

“Go ahead, Tosh,” said the other Owen. “We’ll be right behind you.”

Tosh’s face scrunched up as she concentrated, and then she too rose into the air. Her wings were very different from the others: a small, hard-shelled pair on top with a lovely blue-green sheen, and below them a pair so big they dwarfed her, translucent gold like paper-thin amber. It obviously was more difficult for her to fly than it was for Jack or the other Ianto, but she beat her wings hard and soon outpaced them.

“Those are beetle wings,” said Owen. “You’re all bug-people!”

The other Owen gave him an odd look. “Course we are, mate. You’re a Beetle yourself. If we could fly, ours would look like that too.”

 _Bug-people,_ Ianto thought. _Jack’s a Cicada. Rhys is a Weevil. Owen is a Beetle. Myfanwy’s counterpart is an actual moth._

Everything made sense… except for whatever was going on with Owen. 

And then they reached the autopsy room, and everything else went out of Ianto’s head. Jack sat on the floor holding Gwen, with Tosh and the other Ianto crouched beside them. Gwen was drenched in blood. Not bug blood, red human blood, and far too much of it. Her clothes were in tatters, ripped and clawed like the flesh beneath; her eyes were closed, her face white.

“She went berserk,” Jack said. “You know how Mantises get. No care for herself. I couldn’t stop her.”

Both Owens dropped to their knees in front of Gwen, reaching out to examine her, and then the other Owen froze and stared at Ianto’s Owen, his eyes wide. “Are you still a doctor?”

“Yes,” Owen said absently, taking Gwen’s pulse. “Christ, she’s lost a lot of blood. Get her on the table. I need scissors—saline—”

Tosh and the other Ianto jumped up, scrambling to get what Owen needed. Jack lifted Gwen on the the table, stroking her hair back from her face while Owen cut her clothes off. He had plenty of help and Ianto didn’t want to crowd him, so he stepped out of the way. And so he found himself standing beside the other Owen, both of them watching his Owen working over another Gwen. 

“He can still save people,” the other Owen said softly. “I can see what he’s doing, but I can’t understand it. Not anymore.”

“Oi!” Owen called out, glancing at them. “Talk louder. I need to know what I’m dealing with here. How different are you from us, physiologically?”

Tosh, Jack, and the other Ianto looked baffled. The other Owen said, “You called us ‘bug-people.’ Do you mean you’re not kinden?” At Owen’s equally baffled silence, the other Owen elaborated, “No powers that come from the concept of a certain insect?”

“That would be no,” said Ianto. “We’re just human.”

“We’re human,” said Jack. 

Tosh snatched up a scanner and waved it over Owen. “He’s human too. Physiologically identical to us.” 

“And he’s still Apt,” the other Owen said, his voice nearly choked with bitterness. To Ianto and Owen, he said, “I’m not. I had an accident with the Rift. It switched me around. I didn’t even know that was possible. Now I can’t use doorknobs or stun guns or scanners. I can’t start an IV line or do an intubation. I can cut with a scalpel, but I don’t know what I’m looking at.”

Intent as Owen was on Gwen, that made him glance up, his face a mask of sympathetic horror, before he quickly turned back his work. 

“Apt, like aptitude,” Ianto said, trying to give the Owens a moment to recover. “For machines or science. Right?”

Tosh nodded. “Ianto’s a Wasp and I’m a Beetle, so we’re Apt. So was Owen before the accident. The Hub was built by Apt kinden, so it’s awfully inconvenient for Inapt kinden like Gwen and Jack. All those doorknobs and elevators!”

Owen didn’t look up, but he said, “What do you Inapt lot live in, then? Tents?”

“We have push doors and servants to guard them,” Jack replied. “Inside, we use screens and curtains.”

Owen was frowning over Gwen. “She’s not responding as well as she should. Owen—fuck, no—Tosh—is there something I’m missing? Do you know?”

“I told you, Jack, we need an Inapt healer,” the other Owen said. “Apt people respond better to Apt healing—medicine and surgery. Inapt people respond better to Inapt healing.”

“What’s that?” Owen asked.

“Magic,” said Jack. “I don’t know it, though. It’s a specialized art.”

“And you don’t know it, either, Owen?” asked Owen.

The other Owen shook his head. “I was Apt until a couple months ago. I couldn’t understand magic any more than Jack can understand how to fire a gun.”

“Well, you better figure it out fast,” Owen said. “I can’t stabilize her. She’s just not responding.”

“But I don’t—I never studied—It’s impossible.” The other Owen looked around wildly, his gaze settling on Tosh. “Tell them, Tosh. We had to study for years and years. You can’t become a doctor by wishing you were one!”

“I know I can’t heal because I’ve tried. And tried, and tried. I don’t have the gift.” From the weight in Jack’s voice, he’d lived as long as Ianto’s Jack, though Ianto didn’t know if that was possible here. “But years of study is an Apt thing. You were a healer before, Owen. Maybe you still are. Get out there and give it your best shot.” 

The other Owen stumbled forward, looking panicked. “I have no idea how to even try!”

“It’s simple. Put your hands on her, and imagine her healed.” Jack spoke with absolute assurance, but Ianto knew him well enough to suspect that he was talking out of his arse. From the glance the other Ianto gave him, he knew too. But it gave the other Owen enough confidence to step forward. 

The Owens looked at each other, and Ianto’s Owen stepped aside. The other Owen put his hands on the pale, blood-smeared skin of Gwen’s shoulders.

“You can do it, mate,” said Owen. “I’m a bloody brilliant doctor, so you’re bound to be a bloody brilliant magical healer.”

The others added their encouragement, from Jack’s confident, “Go on, then,” to Tosh’s “I believe in you,” to the disconcertingly simultaneous “Imagine her healed,” from both Iantos. 

The other Owen closed his eyes. For several minutes, nothing seemed to happen. But after a while, with no fanfare, Gwen’s breathing steadied, the frantic beeping of the monitors stopped, and a little color came back to her cheeks and lips.

The other Owen opened his eyes. In a barely audible voice, he said, “I did it.” Then he staggered, clutching at the edge of the table.

Owen grabbed and steadied him. “You did, mate. Good work. Now you have a lie-down.”

“No, no. I’m fine.”

Jack clapped the other Owen on the back and said, “Then sit down and eat something.”

“I’ll bring in some kadith,” said the other Ianto. “Again.”

“Order a pizza while you’re at it,” called the other Owen. “I’m starved. And a curry. Two curries.” 

With a put-upon sigh that Ianto could tell was 80% insincere, the other Ianto went off to order delivery. The other Owen stayed with Gwen, sitting in a chair by the table that Tosh pulled up for him, while Jack, Tosh, Ianto, and Owen went to clean up after the battle, hauling stunned Weevils to their cells, and putting dead Weevils in the morgue. The latter were mostly Gwen’s work, judging by the condition of the bodies.

Jack caught Ianto staring at an extremely dead Weevil and asked, “What’s your Gwen like?”

“She certainly can be ferocious,” admitted Ianto. “But not like this.”

“And what’s your Jack like?” asked Jack.

“A giant cock,” said Owen. “A colossal twat. Pushy, bossy, disappears just when you need him, leaves a trail of dead bodies and destruction in his wake… Oh, and he’s shagging Ianto.”

Jack smiled. “Sounds like me. Am I shagging anyone else?” 

Ianto and Owen glanced at each other. 

“Did he shag Gwen?” Owen asked.

“Why are you asking me?” Ianto replied.

“You should know, shouldn’t you? You’re the one who's in his pants.”

“I don’t know,” Ianto said. “I think so, though. Probably. I’m sure they’ve at least kissed. What about you, did he ever shag you?”

“How can you not know this?” Owen asked, then shrugged and said, “Just once. When we got stuck in the elevator on the fish planet.”

“I knew it!” said Ianto. 

Defensively, Owen said, “I was bored, all right?”

“What about me?” asked Tosh. 

“Oh yeah, you two had a thing going for a while,” said Owen. “He rescued you from prison, and you were in a really bad state afterward. Nightmares. Panic attacks. He slept with you until you were through it. Mostly just sleeping, but sometimes not. And you had a few goes after that, every now and then, for old times’ sake.” 

Tosh’s cheeks colored. “I meant, what’s the other me like?”

“You’re lovely,” said Ianto and Owen, in the same breath. 

“Good to know that all versions of me have still got it,” said Jack. 

Back in the autopsy room, they met back up with the other Ianto, and sat around drinking kadith (which did, in fact, taste like clam broth) and waiting on pizza and curry delivery. 

“You’re not drinking, Owen,” said Tosh. “Don’t you like kadith?”

The other Owen frowned. “You don’t look good.” Before Owen could stop him, he put a hand on Owen’s forehead. “You’re cold—maybe delayed shock—” 

He reached for Owen’s pulse, but Owen caught his hand. “Don’t panic, but I’m already dead.” 

Ianto winced at the ripple of bewilderment and horror that went around the room. 

“It’s a long story,” said Owen. “But yeah, I’m dead. I got shot, then that idiot Jack from my timeline brought me back with a… A gauntlet that brings people back from the dead…”

“A return to above glove?” suggested the other Ianto.

Owen glared at him. “And now I’m stuck like this. Can’t eat or drink, can’t sleep, can’t fuck, can’t even wank.”

“But you’re still a doctor,” said the other Owen, more wistfully than bitterly.

Owen nodded. “You can heal, though.”

“That only works on Inapt people. I’m glad I could help Gwen, but I couldn’t do much for Tosh or Ianto. And Jack doesn’t need it.”

“Oh, you come back too?” Ianto asked. 

Easily, Jack said, “I’m a Cicada. We all do.”

A bell rang, and the other Ianto stood up with dignity. “As a favor and a thank you for saving Gwen… I’ll fetch that.”

“As a favor and a thank you for saving my life, I’ll give you first crack at the pizza,” said the other Owen.

“Oh!” The other Ianto looked genuinely thrown. “I’d forgotten about that.”

“Say what?” Jack asked.

Tosh piped up, “Ianto stung two Wolves that were attacking Owen.”

“Good for you, Ianto,” said Jack, and ruffled the other Ianto’s hair. Then, with a grin, he leaned over and ruffled Ianto’s hair.

Ianto couldn’t decide if it felt good or weird or both. Both, probably, which was definitely Jack. The other Ianto winked at him.

“In my dimension, I’m a field agent,” said Ianto. “I started out as the butler, and I still do make coffee, because none of the others can produce anything but ditchwater. But I also go out on missions.”

The bell rang again, more insistently. The other Ianto left, looking thoughtful. He returned with several pizza boxes and curry containers. Everyone but Owen pounced on them. Ianto opened a box, then recoiled. “Agh!”

“Don’t you like bug feast?” asked Jack. “It’s my Ianto’s favorite.”

Everyone was happily digging in. Ianto averted his eyes, but he would never forget that first glimpse of bug feast pizza. It would haunt his dreams. 

“I like meat feast,” said Ianto, trying not to listen to the crunching, chewing, and sucking sounds. “It’s got sausage and bacon and—”

“What’s bacon?” asked Tosh.

“Pig meat,” said Owen. There was a baffled silence. “Don’t you have non-bug animals here?” 

“Oh, a few,” said Tosh. “We have wolves, of course—that’s what our Wolves are named after. Um… horses. We ride on them, sometimes, though most people prefer riding beetles, and of course for a gymkhana you’d want a jumping spider. A few others. Not many. Most of the life on Earth is insects.”

“What’s kadith, then?” asked Owen. If Ianto had been able to look up, he’d have strangled him.

“It’s a broth made from a water creature,” said Tosh.

“From the larvae of caddis flies,” the other Ianto elaborated. “They’re carefully bred in special ponds. This is a very fine Llanelli kadith. Their ponds are sprinkled with laver, which the larvae use to construct the cases that give the flavor to kadith.”

Ianto discreetly set down his cup. 

“And the pizza crust, what’s that?” asked Owen. 

“Cricket flour,” said Jack through a mouthful of… something.

“And the cheese?”

“From roaches,” said Tosh. “It’s not technically milk like mammals produce—it’s crystallized, not liquid—but it’s a complete protein, and it melts up nicely.”

“And the curry?” Owen was enjoying himself, the bastard. The last time Ianto had heard him so happy at a mealtime, he’d been alive. So he tried not to begrudge him his fun, even when the other Owen explained, in far too much detail, exactly what was in the curry. 

The masticating had mostly stopped when Gwen mumbled, “Did I miss dinner?”

Ianto valiantly opened his eyes. Everyone was crowding around Gwen, so he joined them. Both Owens approved of her condition, though they wouldn’t let her eat anything solid. She had to content herself with a cup of kadith and a stern warning from Jack to take care of herself.

Gwen fell back asleep after drinking half a cup and extracting a promise from the other Ianto to call Rhys and tell him she’d had a minor accident and would be home in the morning. The Owens stayed with her, talking intently. 

“Really, Ianto or Tosh have to open _all_ doors for you?” Owen said incredulously. “The loo too? Before _and_ after? Why not just rig the doors so they open automatically?”

“Wolf attacks, alien shapeshifters, time-traveling thieves, you know how it is,” said the other Owen. “Besides, it was never a problem before. Gwen expects it and Jack actually enjoys it. Tosh likes being helpful and Ianto likes feeling useful. I never bothered, except in emergencies… well, sometimes for Tosh if I was in a good mood. I never noticed till now how many bloody knobs and locks and latches and elevators and machines there were in this bloody Apt place!”

“At least you can eat,” said Owen.

“Mmm, there’s that,” said the other Owen. He leaned over and picked up a slice of pizza, and Ianto was forced to flee.

Jack fell into step beside him, and the other Ianto came up on the other side of Jack. 

“What a sandwich we could make. Jack meat with Ianto buns,” said Jack. “We should take advantage of this, it’s a chance that will never happen again.”

“Isn’t it incest?” asked the other Ianto.

“Not at all,” said Jack. “That’s about relationships, not DNA. But if it made you feel better, you could stay on either side and try not to touch each other, only me. That could be fun.”

Ianto couldn’t help thinking that it did sound fun. And his Jack would get such a kick out of hearing about it. But his stomach was still unsettled from the kadith or the sight of the bug feast pizza or both, he was exhausted and bruised from the fight, and with that combination, sex would be a task to accomplish rather than a pleasure to be indulged in. And that would not be fun.

“Sorry,” Ianto said. “I wish I could, but I think I need a lie-down. Not that sort. Could someone keep an eye on Myfanwy and wake me up if her harness starts flashing?”

“Of course,” said the other Ianto. 

Jack gave Ianto a sharp look. “Do you feel weak? Dizzy? Headachy? Short of breath?”

“Just a touch.”

“Dimension sickness,” said Jack. “It’s not serious if you go straight back, which you will. But I suggest you don’t travel again for another week, and never stay longer than a day when you do. And don’t push yourself. That’ll make it worse.”

“Should we take him to Owen?” The other Ianto asked Jack, then turned to Ianto. “I mean, your Owen.”

“No!” The word burst from Ianto’s lips before he could think about it. 

But when he did think, he had plenty of reasons to not want to tell Owen. For one thing, there was nothing he could do, and that always upset him. For another thing, it was a problem that would solve itself. And, lurking farther below the surface, was the memory of Owen calling him “tea boy,” and of this Ianto opening doors and fetching kadith. He’d only just become a field agent, when Owen had literally died in the line of duty. The last thing he wanted was to be back to being the tea boy who couldn’t handle dimension travel. 

“No,” said Ianto again. “And don’t tell him. I don’t want to worry him.”

A wave of dizziness swept over him, making him stagger. The next thing he knew, he was in Jack’s office, with Jack holding him up while the other Ianto folded a sofa out into a bed. 

As they laid him down on it, the other Ianto said worriedly, “Are you sure he’ll be all right?”

“He’ll be better with rest. And he’ll be fine once he gets back home.” Jack lay down beside Ianto, snuggling into him, then beckoned to the other Ianto. “Come on.”

The other Ianto squeezed in. It was very strange to be cuddled by a version of yourself, but Ianto was very good at cuddling, so it stood to reason that the other Ianto would be too. And while this Jack wasn’t his Jack, he smelled and felt exactly like him. Ianto felt himself relaxing as if a switch had been thrown in his brain.

“Owen,” he mumbled. “Won’t Owen be sick too?”

Jack shrugged. “Maybe, but I doubt it. Dimension sickness is like very severe jet lag. If you’re dead and you don’t sleep or eat, you don’t have circadian rhythms—or in this case, dimensional rhythms—to be disturbed. Anyway, if he does have any problems, he’s with the best person to help him.”

Satisfied, Ianto laid his head down on Jack’s shoulder. To the strange but pleasant feeling of his own hands rubbing his back, he fell asleep. 

Owen didn’t sleep anymore, but his counterpart still did. Owen suspected that if it hadn’t been for the presence of an undead other self who was still a doctor, the other Owen would’ve just pulled an all-nighter to watch over Gwen. Instead, after they talked far into the night and then the early morning, his replies grew slower and made less sense, and his eyelids fluttered and fluttered, until finally both eyes and mouth stayed shut.

It was fascinating to watch his other self fall asleep. He’d always figured he drooled or snored or something else off-putting, but the other Owen was just very, very still. It made Owen want to reach out and feel his pulse.

He didn’t, of course. That would wake up the other Owen for no reason. And Owen didn’t want to literally touch the life that was gone from him.

“Weird, innit?”

Owen jumped at Ianto’s voice. For a surreal, disorienting moment, he wasn’t sure which Ianto it was. They both dressed identically.

Then Ianto—his Ianto—went on, “Watching yourself sleep.”

“You watched more than that,” said Owen. “Never would’ve fancied you for a spot of consensual incest.”

Ianto snorted. “I might’ve, but I didn’t. I just slept. I was tired out.”

He did look tired. More than that, he looked worn and pale. Owen started up to take a closer look at him, but Ianto held up his hand. “I’m fine, Owen. Just tired, like I said. Then I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.”

“Like jet lag,” said Owen.

Ianto’s eyelids flickered, in the way they did when he was hiding something, and then he gave Owen that bland smile of his and agreed, “Like jetlag.”

 _He’s not just tired, he’s exhausted_ , Owen thought. _Probably got half an hour of sleep, and he’s been sitting up ever since, wondering whether Lisa’s alive here. Or worse, whether this other Ianto still has what’s left of her in the basement._

“I’d offer you some coffee, but it’s probably made out of fleas,” said Owen.

“You’d make me coffee… That’d be a change.”

“Might as well. I’ve got so much more time on my hands now.” He glanced down at the sleeping other Owen. “You know, I’ve thought so many times, ‘What if I’d done something different?’ What if I’d been more careful. What if I’d moved quicker.”

“What if you’d let him kill Martha,” said Ianto quietly. 

The picture of that alternate reality flashed into his mind in an instant: Martha, sprawled and bleeding; Owen, too selfish or slow to get in front of her, left alive and hating himself. “No!”

“You _never_ thought of that?” Ianto asked. “Not even as a… just as a thing that could have happened?”

Owen shook his head. “Funny, that. Guess I should’ve. But I did think, you know, what if in some other universe I’d had something else happen. What if I’d been completely paralyzed, but I could still breathe and taste and smell. What if I had localized brain damage, so I was alive and I could do everything a living man could do, except be a doctor. Would I be willing to switch?”

“Would you?” Ianto asked.

Owen scratched his head, and realized as he did so that it was out of pure habit. He didn’t itch anymore. His fingers and scalp were numb. All he could feel was pressure, with no pleasure. “I thought I would. Probably. How great would it be to have a curry again!” 

Ianto glanced involuntarily at the empty curry containers poking out of the trash, and actually turned green. He averted his gaze and sat down heavily in a chair. Poor bloke! Owen couldn’t help laughing, though.

“It never occurred to me to ask myself, ‘What if I was alive and could eat and shag and sleep and shit and breathe, but all the food is made out of bugs and I not only can’t be a doctor, I literally can’t comprehend any mechanical or scientific thing, to the point where I’d starve to death inside a locked room before I could figure out how to turn a doorknob?”

“It’s hard for me to wrap my head around,” Ianto admitted.

“Think of it as localized brain damage, like I mentioned before,” said Owen. “You ever read _The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat?_ He had a minor stroke and got some damage to the part of the brain that distinguishes between living and non-living things. He could see his wife just fine. The hat too. He could describe them both. But he couldn’t tell which was which.”

He glanced at the other Owen, who was still deeply asleep. “It was hard on him. He thought of offing himself. Felt useless.”

“Owen…” Ianto began.

Owen hurried on, not wanting to have that conversation right now. “Anyway, makes me kind of glad it’s not actually my choice. I’d love to be able to shag again. Even take a good piss. A deep breath. But I bet you’re starving right now, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” said Ianto. “At least they have water.”

“I’m not. I can pass up the bug stuff and feel just fine. And I can’t imagine magic healing is as satisfying as surgery. And that piss—imagine having to call _you_ every time I want one, and have you standing outside the door all the while!”

“I think they need to renovate the Hub,” said Ianto.

“I absolutely agree,” said a new voice. It was the other Ianto, fresh as a daisy at God knows what this witching hour was. “You do missions. You fight. I could too, if I wasn’t spending all my time opening doors and pushing buttons for Gwen and Jack and Owen too, now.”

Tosh wandered in, rubbing her eyes. “Why is everyone awake? It’s four in the morning! I’m the only one who’s supposed to be awake now.”

“And me,” said Jack. Of course that wanker looked bloody dashing, as usual. “Time for you two to get back home. Your pterodactyl’s harness is brightening up.”

Owen and Ianto scrambled up. 

“No rush,” said Jack. “You’ve got time for a cuppa before you go. Ianto could fix you some—”

“No, thank you,” said Ianto politely. Owen nearly had to stuff his fist into his mouth to keep from bursting out laughing. 

They headed out, leaving the sleeping other Owen and Gwen. Owen wondered if his other self would feel better now that he’d realized that he could still heal (even if actual medicine was more fun), and if he’d take extra pleasure in his cricket curries and bug feast pizzas, now that he knew how easily he could have lost them. Owen hoped so.

Ianto coaxed Myfanwy down with a bit of dark chocolate. Then he and Owen stood by her, each with one hand on the now-sparkling harness and holding hands with the other. 

“Go on, Myf,” said Ianto. “Take us home.”

Everything went white. But it wasn’t as disorienting as before, now that Owen knew what was going on. Everything was always easier to deal with when you could understand it.

They opened their eyes to bright sunlight and a grassy plain, in the middle of a paddock of sodding _sheep_. The sheep bleated and milled about, alarmed at the sudden appearance of two men and a pterodactyl. Myfanwy gave a screech, shook them off, and took flight, spiraling up into a beautiful cloudless sky.

“Oh, fuck,” said Owen. “Where the hell are we?”

“The Hub,” said Ianto.

“Ha, ha. Very funny.”

“No, I’m serious. Look around.” 

When Owen managed to look somewhere other than at the diminishing speck that was their only shot at getting home and at the bloody bleating wool-monsters, he saw that Ianto just maybe, possibly, was right. 

The plain seemed to have been plonked down in the middle of a very familiar section of Cardiff. It had something like an airplane hangar off to one side, and right next to that was a random section of pavement that did, in fact, look rather like the entrance to the Hub.

“Think we should knock?” asked Owen. 

“No,” said Ianto. “They’re coming up.”

He was right _again._ Jack and Gwen and Tosh were all emerging from the disguised entrance. 

Gwen wore a black leather eyepatch to match her usual black leathers. Permanent injury was always possible in their line of work—look what had happened to him—but he’d seen enough eye injuries to know what that rakish patch probably covered. 

He waited for another Ianto and another Owen, but no. Either they were lurking in the Hub or off on a mission. Or dead. It was always possibly that they were dead. Glancing at Ianto, Owen wondered if he was thinking the exact same thing. He looked distinctly pale. 

“Our pterodactyl got herself a dimension travel harness and dragged us here,” Owen said. “We’re from Torchwood in another dimension.”

All three of their team counterparts glanced at each other, then started to laugh. 

“What timing!” Gwen gasped. 

“ _Perfect_ timing,” said Jack, leering at Ianto _and_ Owen. 

“Oh, but maybe they’d rather sit it out,” said Tosh between giggles. “I mean, they’re by themselves…”

“Oi!” Owen exclaimed. “What’s so bloody hilarious? Sit what out?”

“Oh!” Ianto exclaimed. “I feel… Um…” 

Jack strode up, bent Ianto backwards, and kissed him full on the mouth. It was so unexpected that Owen was hit with a wave of bitterness. One more thing he could never have again. 

He looked away, and was confronted by the sight of Gwen nibbling on Tosh’s ear. Tosh was giggling again, turning her head to give Gwen better access. It was a sight Owen would have loved to have seen back when he was alive. Now, it only frustrated him.

“What the hell is going on?” Owen demanded. “Is this the orgy dimension, or did you all get hit by alien sex pollen?”

“Can’t you feel it, Owen?” Tosh asked. “Ianto can… I think.”

Owen glanced over again, and saw that Ianto had his hand up Jack’s shirt and Jack had his hand down Ianto’s pants and… 

“I can’t feel anything!” Owen exploded. “I’m dead, all right? Dead and resurrected. The sex pollen doesn’t work on me. Do you want me to get into the Hub and figure out a cure, or shall I wait a bit while you all have your fun?”

That apparently got through to them. Ianto pried himself away from Jack, flushed and breathing hard, while Gwen stopped her oral explorations of Tosh’s neck. 

“It’s not sex pollen,” said Ianto. “I can hear a voice in my head. He says his name is Llefelys and he’s pleased to meet me.”

“You’re hearing a... telepathic Welsh sex alien?” Owen asked.

“No,” said Jack. “A telepathic Welsh dragon.”

And that was when the dragons emerged from the airplane hangar. 

They were five of them, about the height of large horses but longer and leaner. Their heads were shaped like those of sea horses, and their raccoon-like feet bore razor-sharp talons. The dragons had the magnetic presence of large predators, yet somehow Owen didn’t fear them. They moved with a dainty, light-stepping grace, their smooth hides glinting in the sun, and their huge dark eyes held the unmistakable intelligence of sentient beings.

The dragon who had come out first, whose iridescent hide changed color every time she moved, came forward to nuzzle Jack affectionately. He stroked her nose and said, “This is my darling, Amalthea.”

Gwen threw her arms around a male dragon—the sex of the males, at least, was extremely obvious—whose black hide had a golden sheen. “This is my Lancelot.”

“And my Grace,” said Tosh, stroking the dragon of glittering silver.

Ianto and the male dragon with a very bright, matte red hide slowly approached each other. 

“I can hear him in my mind,” said Ianto, his voice filled with wonder. “Llefelys.”

“Our Ianto was injured in our last battle,” said Jack. “He’ll be fine, but he’s sedated right now. It’d be too hard on him otherwise. Owen’s down below, keeping an eye on him. I was wondering if you and Llefelys would be able to hear each other.” 

_I can hear you,_ said a distinctly feminine voice. 

Owen looked up, into the eyes of the storm-gray dragon. 

_My name is Hurricane,_ she said. _And you are Owen. Not my Owen… but perhaps all Owens are my Owen. Shall we find out?_

She dipped her head toward him, and he automatically reached out to touch her forehead.

He could _feel_. He could feel the grass under her feet, and the wind on her body, and his own hand touching her. When she spread her translucent wings, he experienced the movement. The air rushed in and out of her lungs like bellows, and every breath was his as well. 

_There,_ she said, and he could feel her satisfaction. _That’s more like it. Now let’s see if we can go deeper…_

Desire nearly knocked him off his feet. He was on fire, as much as he’d ever been for Diane or Katie or Gwen, as much as he’d been as a teenager having a secret wank under the covers. The hunger to touch and be touched was unbearable, close to pain and worth any pain to fulfill…

 _Yes,_ said Hurricane. _This is my heat, and I must be mating soon. You’d better get below. I know you humans don’t like to mate out here in the field._

She sprang upward, her powerful wings beating hard, her body like a cloud against the blue expanse. The other dragons followed her, chasing her, glittering like coins tossed against the sky. Owen was weightless, flying, _wanting…_

An arm closed around his. He staggered, back in his heavy earthbound body. Tosh and Gwen were supporting him, one on each side, as Jack was supporting a dazed-looking Ianto. 

He could feel their hands, hot on his bare skin. He could feel their body heat. 

“I can feel,” he said, and he heard his own voice crack.

Tosh leaned in and kissed his cheek. That was usually a platonic gesture, but not the way she did it. “Isn’t it lovely?”

Owen nodded, unable to speak. 

“All of us together, then?” asked Jack.

Owen and Ianto glanced at each other. Ianto was flushed and breathless, his hair tousled, his lips parted: infinitely desirable. 

“Yes, please,” said Ianto, his voice husky, and Owen nodded again. 

And then they were stumbling into the Hub, into the office where a bunch of roll-up futons had been tossed on to the floor.

“Our Owen’s wearing a telepathic blocker,” said Jack. “So he won’t be distracted if our Ianto needs him.”

“Poor your Owen,” said Owen, though he couldn’t care less. Lucky their Owen, if this was a normal thing around here. 

Gwen laid him down on the futon, grabbed his shirt in both hands and ripped it straight down the front. Ianto kissed him on the mouth. Owen could feel the heat and moisture, feel the slight roughness of his skin where he hadn’t had a chance to shave, feel the catch of his breath when Tosh kissed her way up the side of Ianto’s neck. When she got to the junction of their lips, they both turned into her, instinctively as plants stretching toward the sun.

It was all overwhelming, dizzying, yet somehow not too much. In his ear, Gwen murmured, “Dragons mate in a group. It’s natural for them, so it’s natural for us. That’s why it always feels good.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Jack, putting his hand between her thighs. 

Owen could smell her arousal. He rolled over and joined in. Her silky hair was all over his face, smelling like her favorite shampoo, then fell back again when she came, contracting around his finger. 

A small hand pushed him down on his back. Tosh wriggled all over him, laughing with sheer delight and rubbing herself against his skin, then obligingly moving aside to let Ianto suck his nipples. When he reached up to cup her breasts, he could feel their weight and warmth, feel her nipples hardening. 

He felt a tug, and looked down to see Gwen pulling off his pants with her _teeth_.

 _Lucky, lucky me_.

Finally, someone had stripped Jack. He was unsurprisingly spectacular naked. The wanker was hung like a horse and twice as hard. 

Which made Owen realize that he wasn’t. He had sensation, but no bloodflow. That cut through his giddy happiness like a dash of cold water to the face. “I can’t—I told you, I’m—”

“Hush,” whispered Ianto. “Can’t you tell no one cares?”

He followed it up by slithering down and taking Owen in his mouth. Owen felt that all right, hard or soft. As he arched up, he had the distant memory of counseling a paraplegic patient he’d had once, and explaining to him that mechanics weren’t everything and a bloke didn’t need a working cock to have an orgasm.

As it turned out, he’d been absolutely right. 

Ianto woke up in a pile of naked bodies. His head was on Owen’s unmoving chest, Tosh was curled into them both, Jack was spooning him from behind, and Gwen, rather inexplicably, was clutching his ankle.

The orgy itself had been glorious. All his physical discomfort had vanished for the duration, washed away in a tide of sensual bliss. It had also been a true joy to see Owen get to experience that kind of pleasure, and Ianto had made sure to give him every bit of it that he could. Even now that the overwhelming force of the dragons’ mating flight had receded, Owen still wore a deeply contented smile.

Ianto only wished he felt that good himself. After that kind of sex, he ought to still be in an Owen-worthy blissed-out haze. Instead, he felt exhausted and ill. His head ached, his skin was over-sensitive, and even lying down, he felt dizzy.

“Morning,” said Owen. “Never knew the real aphrodisiac was dragons.”

Ianto managed a smile. “Can you still feel it?”

“Just a little bit. Nowhere near so intense. Still…” He stretched luxuriously. “I’ll remember this forever. Maybe we can come back for a return visit some day. What do you think? Can we train Myfanwy to take us back to the orgy dimension?”

Jack awoke all at once, like a cat, smiled lazily at them, and kissed them both. “Anyone want a shower? A second go?”

For the first time in his life, Ianto did not want a second go. “I’ll take the shower. And make you all some coffee.”

He disentangled himself, grabbed his clothes, and fled before either of them could take a closer look at him. As he’d guessed, given the orgies occurring on a presumably regular basis, this version of the Hub had roomy individual shower cubicles (though not the hot tub he’d been half-expecting) rather than the prison-style decontamination showers in his.

Ianto turned the heat up high and leaned against the wall, willing it to wash away his weariness. A few minutes in, he got dizzy enough that he had to finish the shower sitting on the floor. 

_I really ought to tell Owen_ , he thought. _Though he probably can’t do anything but worry. And he’s been so happy, and it’s been so long..._

Anyway, they couldn’t go anywhere till Myfanwy returned and the harness lit up again. He wasn’t worried that she wouldn’t come back—unless this world was much more different than just dragons, she wasn’t likely to be offered dark chocolate by anyone not from Torchwood.

 _Your friend is with us,_ came a very Welsh voice in his mind. _I killed a sheep and gave her half._

“Oh, well, that’s all right, then,” said Ianto. “Thank you very much. That was very kind of you.”

 _You’re ill,_ said Llefelys. Ianto felt an odd sensation, like an inside-of-the-head can opening, and then the dragon went on, _Oh… You need to return home. What a shame. I was hoping to fly with you. My Ianto loves it._

Ianto squelched the thought that the absolute last thing he wanted to do at the moment was fly, and said, “Yes, what a shame. Well, I’d better go make the coffee. I’ll come see you before I go, shall I?”

 _That would be nice_ , said Llefelys, and Ianto felt the mental presence withdraw.

When Ianto stepped out of the shower, Jack was waiting for him with a towel and fresh clothes. 

“Ianto—Llefelys’ Ianto—won’t mind if you borrow some of his,” said Jack. “And I know you hate getting back into dirty clothes.”

“I do, thanks.” As Ianto dressed, he asked, “How _is_ your Ianto?”

“He’ll be fine,” Jack said, as if he was trying to convince himself. Then, more firmly, he said, “He _will_ be fine. Might have a bad limp, but that’s all right. He can still ride. We’re just short-handed, that’s all. After Suzie—” He came to an abrupt halt, giving Ianto a sharp glance.

“Our Suzie is dead,” said Ianto. 

Jack seemed relieved at not having to break any bad news. “Ours too, and her Valiant with her. They saved Gwen’s life, and probably Lancelot’s too. That’s how our Gwen lost her eye.” 

Ianto decided not to provide any details on exactly what had happened to his Suzie. “What about Owen?”

“Our Owen’s fine,” said Jack. “What happened to yours?”

“He got shot by a medical researcher named Aaron Copley.”

“Never heard of him,” said Jack with a shrug. “I’ll keep Owen away from him, if I do.”

“Keep everyone away from him. Owen was killed taking a bullet meant for someone else.”

A dark look came over Jack’s handsome face. “Maybe I’ll look this Copley up myself. As a preventative measure, you know. Anyway, I’m off to see Ianto. I’d ask you to come, but it might be confusing for him. He’s on a lot of drugs. I’ll be back in time for coffee. I know you know how I like it.”

Ianto went to brew the coffee, wondering as he did why this Torchwood seemed even more dangerous than his. Or maybe it was just a roll of the cosmic dice that had left Owen dead in his universe, Gwen and the other Ianto with permanent injuries in this one, and Suzie dead in both, though apparently for opposite reasons.

Ianto hesitated over pouring out the coffee. It had become such a minefield since Owen had died. Finally, he made it up for everyone, just in case, including his Owen, their Owen, and a pair of Iantos. Maybe his Owen would enjoy smelling it, if he still could.

When he brought it in, he found everyone cleaned up and waiting for it, including the other Owen. He had a video feed up on his computer to monitor the other Ianto, who was asleep in bed. The other Owen eyed Ianto, then shrugged and sipped his coffee. “Thanks, mate. We should always drag an Ianto out of another dimension when ours is out sick.”

Owen took the cup and held it in his hands with that little smile. He didn’t sniff it, so Ianto guessed he was appreciating being able to feel its warmth. 

Ianto drank his coffee, but it didn’t help as much as he’d hoped. Rather than sharpening his focus, it added a jittery, razor-sharp edge to everything he was feeling. His clothes felt like sandpaper. The light hurt his eyes. The conversation hurt his head. The coffee tasted off, though he knew he’d made it right. 

Owen touched his arm. “You all right?”

“A bit hungover,” said Ianto. It made no sense, as he hadn’t drunk anything and Owen knew it. But as any elaboration he was likely to come up with would probably be even more idiotic, he left it at that.

Owen blinked. “You get sex hangovers?”

To Ianto’s relief, the other Owen stepped in. “Didn’t you tell him to drink some water? You’re all used to dragon heats—normal people don’t shag for hours and hours like that.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Jack.

“I said normal,” retorted the other Owen.

“You do look dehydrated,” said Owen. “And you haven’t had anything to eat since…”

Ianto shrugged. He couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten at the original Hub. It must not have been very memorable.

“Right, the pizza at the Hub,” Owen said. “Our Hub. That was over 24 hours ago. No wonder you look so peaked.”

“I don’t look peaked,” said Ianto.

“Stay here,” said Gwen briskly. “I’ll fetch you something.”

Before she could stand up, a siren went off. Everyone jumped up.

“Weevils?” Owen asked. 

“Rift activity,” said Tosh. She rushed to her computer. There was a dead silence as everyone waited for her report. When she looked up, her face was pale. “Eight doomflyers. ETA, nineteen minutes.”

“Eight!” Gwen’s hand flew to her eyepatch. Then, recovering herself, she said, “I’ll get a start on the harnesses,” and bolted out of the Hub. 

“What are doomflyers?” Owen asked. “Sounds like something Ianto would’ve named.”

“They’re why we have dragons,” said Jack.

In Ianto’s mind, Llefelys said, _They’re why we have you._

“Alien life forms,” said Tosh. She was opening a locker and handing out what looked like enormous laser rifles as she spoke. “They can only be killed by a disintegrator blast to the brain. You have to get up close and actually touch it to their heads.”

“In mid-air,” added Gwen. “While they try to rip you and your dragon to bits.” 

“We’re the last line of defense,” said Jack. “If we let even one through, it’ll land and start feeding.”

“Not on the sheep, I take it,” said Owen.

“Well,” said Tosh, after a pause. “It might _start_ with the sheep.”

“Owen—other Owen—stay here with Ianto—our Ianto,” said Jack. “We need our Owen to fight. Ianto, will Llefelys let you ride him?”

 _Of course_ , said Llefelys.

“Yes,” said Ianto.

Owen grabbed him by the sleeve. “Wait a second. He doesn’t know how to do this.”

“But Llefelys does,” said Jack. “All Ianto needs to do is ride him, and when he gets close enough, stick the doomflyer in the head with the disintegrator rifle and pull the trigger.”

“He doesn’t know how to ride a dragon,” said Owen.

“There’s straps,” said Jack.

“But if you don’t think you can…” began Tosh.

“I can do it,” said Ianto, taking a rifle. “In my Torchwood, I’m a field agent.” 

“What else would you be?” Gwen asked.

“We’ll chat later,” said Jack. “Let’s go!”

The next thing Ianto knew, he was running out with the rest of them, leaving Owen behind. Adrenaline coursed through him as they pelted out of the Hub, into the golden light of late afternoon, and then into the dragon barn. 

Myfanwy gave a screech of greeting from the rafters at the sight of Ianto, sending a stab of pain through his head. But he put on his best smile and waved at her. 

“Bit of chocolate later,” he promised. 

Gwen had already gotten harnesses on her black-gold Lancelot, Jack’s opalescent Amalthea, and the other Ianto’s scarlet Llefelys. Or maybe he was Ianto’s Llefelys. Even thinking about that made Ianto’s head hurt more. As Tosh began harnessing her silver Grace and the other Owen his cloud-gray Hurricane, Jack strode over to Ianto.

“Ever ridden a horse?” Jack asked.

“I rode a Shetland pony in a gymkhana when I was seven,” Ianto said. 

Llefelys crouched down. _Sit here._

Ianto, feeling half in a dream, sat on the dragon’s back. Jack buckled him in, adjusted the straps, and tugged on them. “There. Snug as a bug in a rug.” Then he gave him a closer look. “You _don’t_ look well. Here.”

He produced a flask from one of his pockets. Ianto took a swig. It was excellent brandy, burning down his throat and settling like a coal in his belly. 

“Better?” Jack asked.

“Yes,” Ianto lied. 

“Hold tight to the rifle. Whatever you do, don't drop it. And don’t forget to duck!” 

Jack cupped his face in his hands and kissed his forehead. His lips had the same pleasant heat as the brandy. Then he made a quick circle of the rest of the team, kissing them each in turn: Tosh on the lips, Gwen on the cheek, and the other Owen on the nape of the neck. 

Ianto wondered what sort of relationship he and Jack had in this dimension, then what sort of relationships they all had. Casual sex during dragon heats with lingering intimacy afterward, but no actual romantic relationships? A five-way marriage? 

_Hold tight_ , said Llefelys, and leaped into the air.

Despite the warnings, Ianto nearly dropped his rifle. Llefelys darted out of the barn and soared up into the sky, quick as a dragonfly. His hide was soft and warm. Below and beside and above him flew the other dragons with their riders, glittering in the sun.

Gwen’s hair streamed behind her like a banner, black as her dragon’s hide, both touched with the same golden light. Tosh held her rifle in both hands, scanning the sky. The other Owen’s teeth were bared in manic excitement, halfway between joy and rage. Jack looked like he ought to be the figurehead of a ship.

It would have been magical and glorious if Ianto wasn’t so worried that he might pass out or drop his rifle or be sick or all three. His head was swimming, and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. 

And then the doomflyers came. 

The sky split open, glowing red-orange, and the doomflyers dropped down like hawks out of the crack. 

Ianto didn’t know what he’d expected, exactly, but he hadn’t thought they’d be so _fast_. If the dragons were like dragonflies, the doomflyers were like hummingbirds. Their wings blurred with speed, making it hard to see them clearly. They were bigger than the dragons, they were gray-green like lichen, they had bulbous heads and a whole lot of teeth, and they were upon the team in an instant.

Llefelys zipped around, darting and diving, biting and slashing. But Ianto couldn’t do anything but hang on to the straps in one hand and his rifle in the other. All around Ianto, his teammates were in a battle for their lives, and he couldn’t even tell what was going on. His pulse felt like it was shaking his entire body. Black spots floated across his field of vision. 

He bit his lip, hard, hoping it would stop him from passing out. He tasted blood, and the sharp pain did jolt him closer to consciousness. The other Owen was below him on Hurricane, in a furious battle with one doomflyer, while another was making a beeline for him from behind.

“Llefelys!” Ianto shouted, the word ripping through his throat and leaving it raw. “There!”

Llefelys lunged forward, so suddenly that Ianto’s neck snapped back, then dropped down on the back of the doomflyer, seizing it in his claws. The doomflyer’s swollen head twisted around as if it had no spine, and Ianto caught a nightmare glimpse of bulging white eyes and rows of fangs before he jammed the rifle between the eyes and pulled the trigger. 

The creature shrieked and disintegrated, falling into dust. 

All around him, that same greasy white dust sifted through the air. The other Owen managed to disintegrate the doomflyer he was fighting, and then he and Tosh teamed up on another, the other Owen and Hurricane distracting it while Grace brought Tosh close enough to shoot it in the head.

With that, it was over. They were alone in the sky. The dragons began to spiral down. Ianto hung on to his rifle. That and not passing out were all he could keep in his head. He couldn’t feel Llefelys’s warm hide between his legs. 

He didn’t register the landing, but after a while a lot of people were talking over his head, making it ache worse than ever.

“Disarm his rifle, will you, Tosh? It could go off if he struggles.”

“What about getting the straps off first?”

“The thing that can disintegrate us all goes first.”

“He’s not wounded, he’s sick. Feel his skin—he’s burning up.”

“Sex hangover my arse.”

Owen hated feeling like a useless, breakable bit of unnecessary extra luggage. He hated letting Ianto bugger off to go fly a dragon and fight doomflyers, whatever they were. (Whatever they were, there had to be a better name for them.) But he’d also have hated to abandon a patient, even if the patient didn’t actually need any care at the moment. He might at some point, and everyone else was off saving the world. 

So when they all ran off and left him behind, he went and sat by the other Ianto’s bedside, feeling useless and worrying and resenting that he was worrying, until Hurricane spoke into his mind. _Do you wish to see the battle?_

“Oh, hell yes.”

The next thing Owen knew, he was plunged into the world’s most dizzying video game. He was seeing the nightmare bugs (a much better name than doomflyers) through Hurricane’s eyes, smelling their acrid reek, feeling her lithe body whip through the air with the other Owen on her back, and sharing her fierce joy in battle. 

He also shared her feelings about the other Owen. It was utterly surreal to experience that fond delight directed at himself—well, a version of himself—from the perspective of an alien dragon who thought of him as a charming combination of a comrade in arms and a beloved pet. 

All the while, he kept trying to keep an eye out for Ianto, which was bloody impossible, the way everything was moving. For one thing, Hurricane was looking where _she_ wanted to look, which made it even harder for Owen to track. For another thing, she was used to seeing and moving in 360 degrees. Every time a flash of scarlet came into his field of vision, it would be gone by the time he managed to orient himself to it.

Until a nightmare bug got the drop on them, and Ianto saved their lives. Saved the lives of Hurricane and the other Owen, that was, who was not him. Exactly.

And then Owen forgot all about those sorts of philosophical quandaries, because the battle ended in the same confusing, abrupt manner with which it had been conducted. He finally got a good look at Ianto, just to see him slump forward over his red dragon.

“Hurricane!” Owen called. “Is he wounded? Or fainted from heat and dehydration?”

 _Llefelys says he’s ill,_ she replied. 

“That bloody sneak!” Owen exclaimed. “I knew there was something wrong with him. Just like him to hide it. And just like Jack to let him go out like that.”

He dragged his attention back to the Hub, quickly checked the other Ianto and made sure his vital signs were still stable, then grabbed a first aid kit and ran for it. 

Hurricane chose that moment to drop him back into her head, showing him everyone clustered around Ianto. Owen ran straight into a wall.

“Get out of my head!” Owen yelled. 

She withdrew with a distinct sense of angry hurt, leaving him feeling like an arsehole. A dead arsehole who could no longer feel anything at all, not even the limited sensation that had lingered in between the intensity of the orgy and the first-person Hurricane POV on the battle. Maybe he ought to be grateful he’d gotten anything at all, but the numbness that he normally tried to ignore now felt like a black hole of emptiness, sucking everything he was into it.

At the dragon hangar, he found everyone clustered around Ianto, who was still strapped to the red dragon’s back. Several of them were wounded themselves—Tosh had a nasty gash across her hip, her silver Grace was also slashed and bleeding, and Jack had blood sheeting down the side of his head, his left arm hung bloody and limp, and his left hand looked _chewed_ —but everyone’s focus was on Ianto. 

The reason became obvious when Owen got closer: Ianto was clutching his rifle for dear life, and his finger was perilously near the trigger.

“Oi!” Owen called. “Does that thing have a safety?”

“No,” said Tosh.

“Of course not,” sighed Owen. “This is Torchwood.”

“I can take it,” Jack suggested. “I can be reconstituted if I’m disintegrated. Probably.”

“Let’s not test that,” said Gwen. 

Owen edged up to Ianto, who seemed to be semi-conscious. His eyes were half-open, but he wasn’t obeying commands. Owen reached out to touch his forehead, then recalled that he wouldn’t be able to feel the difference between fever and hypothermia. He looked instead, and saw damp flushed skin and hair wet with sweat. Fever, most likely. A cool touch might feel good. Owen laid his palm on Ianto’s forehead, and Ianto sighed and turned into his hand. 

All right, then. Owen stroked his forehead and hair, speaking in the calm, soft tone that would comfort delirious people even if they had no idea what he was actually saying. “Sex hangover, huh? I’ll have you know I didn’t fall for that. Thought you just needed a good drink of water and food that isn’t bugs.”

Over Ianto’s slumped form, Owen saw the other Owen raise his eyebrows. 

“Tell you later,” Owen said, still in the same tone. He wrapped his hand around Ianto’s, gently working at his locked fingers, and said, “You can let go of that now. You’re done.”

Jack leaned in. “You didn’t drop it. It’s all right to give it back now.” 

One of them must have gotten through to him, because Ianto rolled his head to look up at them. “I can let go?”

“Yes,” said Owen.

“Let it go,” said Jack. 

Ianto released the rifle. Jack took it with his good hand and passed it to Tosh, then kissed Ianto’s cheek. “You fought well. Let’s get you back to the Hub now.”

“Two Iantos in the infirmary,” said the other Owen. “That’s a first.”

Owen cupped Ianto’s face, trying to get him to focus on his eyes. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Dimension sickness,” sighed Ianto. “Bug Jack told me.”

“Bug Jack?” echoed Jack.

Ianto nodded dreamily. “He’s a Cicada.”

“And you’re delirious,” said Jack, ruffling his hair. 

“Actually…” Owen began, then decided it was too complicated. “What did he tell you about dimension sickness, Ianto?”

“He said I should go home.” Ianto closed his eyes. If Owen still had a beating heart, that would have given him a jolt. As it was, the jolt was purely in his mind, and lasted only as long as it took for Ianto to exhale. 

“Just asleep,” said Gwen. 

Myfanwy swooped down from the rafters, her dimensional harness dull and lightless, screeched, then flittered away. 

“Useless bloody dinosaur,” Owen muttered. He yelled up at her, “ _I’m_ not giving you any treats, I can tell you that!”

“I’ll look up dimension sickness,” said Tosh. “If Torchwood has any records on it, maybe they’ll tell us the treatment.”

A flash of iridescence caught Owen’s eyes. Amalthea opened her jaws, neatly grabbed Jack by the back of his coat, and tugged him toward her.

“All right, all right,” said Jack. “Owen, can you cut off my coat?”

Both Owens stepped forward, reaching into their kits for shears. Owen stepped back, and his counterpart sliced off Jack’s coat and shirt, revealing a horrific compound fracture of his upper arm. 

Normally Jack didn’t show any signs of pain, let alone shock. But though this Jack held his head high and had an expression of unconcern plastered over his face, he was pale and sweaty and starting to shiver. The other Owen unobtrusively steadied him.

“Go on,” said Jack.

Amalthea breathed on him. An opalescent cloud settled over him, making his skin shimmer. The gash on his temple closed, his shattered arm and mangled hand healed, and the color returned to this face. 

He straightened and stroked her head. “Thanks, darling.” Then, turning back to the group, he said, “Owen—my Owen—why don’t you stitch up Grace, then catch us back at the Hub? I can carry Ianto if Gwen and the other Owen help Tosh.”

“Wait a sec,” said Owen. “Didn’t Amalthea just heal you? You didn’t do it yourself?”

Jack, who was busy unbuckling Ianto, glanced over his shoulder. “No, of course not.”

 _Amalthea is… different,_ said Hurricane. _But she can only heal her rider._

Back at the Hub, Owen put Ianto to bed and started an IV for lack of any better ideas; he _was_ dehydrated, so at least Owen could fix the easy problem. Then he disinfected and stitched Tosh’s hip, and helped her hobble to her computer and prop her foot while she looked up dimension sickness. 

It didn’t take long for her to dig up the information that Owen had already guessed: dimension travel was not known to affect animals, but it was rough on living humans. 

“‘Humans should not stay away from their home dimension for more than one to two days,’” Tosh read. “If they begin suffering from dimension sickness earlier than that, they should return immediately. If they cannot be returned as soon as symptoms begin, they may be temporarily treated with rest and symptomatic treatments, such as anti-pyretics, painkillers, and stimulants.”

“Christ,” muttered Owen. “There’s a fun combination.”

Tosh went on, “‘However, such treatments must be regarded as for emergency use only. Dimension sickness can only be cured by return to the home dimension. A prolonged course of illness may be fatal.’”

“How long is ‘prolonged?’” asked Owen. 

Tosh shook her head. “Doesn’t say.”

“Bloody Myfanwy!” Owen exploded. “Tosh, is there some way to get that dimension thing off her and on me? Or get me another one?”

“It doesn’t look like it,” she said, which he knew perfectly well was Tosh-speak for “I have already read all the available literature in every extant language and also the extinct ones, and the answer is no.” She added, “But I’ll check.” Which meant, “I’ll read them all again and also stay up all night doing original research, but the answer is probably still no.”

One by one, everyone else wandered off to go home or crash somewhere in the Hub, until only Owen and Tosh were still there and awake. Owen treated Ianto as the records recommended, dosing him with fever-reducers and painkillers and bronchodilators to help him breathe easier. He’d save the stimulants for the morning.

Since Owen couldn’t sleep, it was nice to have Tosh’s company. This Tosh turned out to be very similar to his Tosh, but more confident and outgoing. When it became perfectly clear that the records weren’t going to turn up anything else, she beckoned Owen close, cupped a hand over the back of his head, and tipped up her face in clear invitation. 

“Sorry, love,” he said. “I kicked Hurricane out of my head. I can’t feel anything now.”

She cocked her head in a sparrow-like gesture, then said, “Keep me company, then. Pull up a chair.”

He did, and she snuggled into him and rested her head on his shoulder. His body was numb and heavy and disconnected, something he manipulated like a puppet rather than an integral part of his self. All he could feel of her was a faint pressure. But he could see her curled into him like she didn’t care how cold and dead he was, and hear her contented little sigh when he experimentally put his arm around her. 

All in all, it wasn’t a bad way to spend a sleepless night.

In the morning, Owen gave Ianto a stimulant injection. He awoke quickly and listened to Owen’s explanations, including the part where he could die, then just said, “Well then, we’d better get back.” Then, slowly, he said, “At least— _I_ have to get back.”

It hadn’t even occurred to Owen that he could stay. But of course Ianto would think of that. He’d seen Owen’s giddy joy at the orgy, and he’d been around for everything after Owen had died. No doubt Jack had told him about Owen’s attempt to set the record for the most time spent underwater by a dead man.

“I can’t let you go off to who knows where, accompanied only by a mad pterodactyl, when you’re on five different medications and could drop dead at any moment,” Owen pointed out. “We’ve already been to Bug World and Dragon World. For all we know, Rabid Bat World will be next. Or Man-Eating Oozing Blob World. That’ll be nice for you to deal with when you’re off your head with fever.”

“Yes, I might hallucinate I’m on Man-Eating Oozing Blob World,” said Ianto, startling a laugh out of Owen. “Seriously, if you want to stay, I can manage. This time I’ll tell Myfanwy to take us home.”

“Because she understands English so well.” But Owen knew that stubborn look on Ianto’s face, so he admitted, “I don’t want to stay. All right? I had a fight with Hurricane and she’s not giving me any more treats. I’m sick of being called ‘the other Owen,’ I’m too breakable to fly a dragon and they already have a perfectly good doctor, and—” _And I can’t stand seeing myself alive, eating and drinking and fucking._ “—and they’re all way too up in each others’ business here.”

“Business. Never heard it called that before.” But Ianto looked relieved. 

He went off to the shower, refusing any help, and returned clean and prim in his ridiculous vest, looking like he’d starched himself. He seemed a bit jittery, his fingers twitching, which made Owen think he might have overdone it with the stimulant. When they went to the main area of the Hub, Ianto walked much too fast, tapping his fingers in the walls. Well, if they did make it back to the Hub, he could bounce off the walls of Jack’s flat till it wore off. 

“Let’s go round up your friend from the Jurassic,” said Jack cheerfully, giving Ianto a kiss on the top of his head. He followed it up by kissing Owen on the lips. It probably would have been nice if he could have felt it as more than a vague pressure. 

“Touchy-feely lot you are here,” remarked Owen.

His Tosh would have been hurt by that comment, given how they’d spent their night. But this Tosh smiled and said, “Makes it all worthwhile.”

Gwen and Jack accompanied them to the dragon hangar, where Ianto stopped to stroke the red dragon. “Goodbye, Llefelys.”

Owen couldn’t hear what the dragon said in reply, but Ianto smiled.

 _Goodbye, Owen_ , said Hurricane. 

For once in his life, Owen decided to let bygones be bygones. “Goodbye, Hurricane.”

 _I shall miss our little mascot,_ she said, lifting a clawed foot to indicate Myfanwy.

Gwen had gone out and bought a stash of dark chocolate bars for that undeserving nuisance of a dinosaur, which she passed over to Ianto. He snapped off pieces, tossing them into the air for her to catch, saying, “Take us to the Hub, Myfanwy. Go home.”

Her harness began to sparkle. Ianto stashed the chocolate, and he and Owen clasped hands and touched the harness.

“Goodbye!” Ianto called.

“Good luck!” shouted Jack.

“Home,” Owen said. “Take us home.”

The world went white. 

Ianto’s first thought was, _We’ve been gone long enough for someone to get a dog?_

But no. The great furry beast staring him down from the catwalk over the basketball court undoubtedly just meant that Myfanwy had brought them to Werewolf World. 

“Hello,” Ianto said politely. “Er, who are you?”

“Ianto,” Owen said. “That’s a dog.”

“Owen?” It took Ianto a second to recognize Tosh’s voice. She sounded so shaky. Then she stepped out from behind the dog—no, definitely a wolf, it was way too big to be a dog—and stared down at them. All the blood had drained from her face. “Are you a ghost?”

“No—well—” Owen began.

“We’re from another version of Torchwood,” Ianto said. The drugs Owen had given him were really kicking in now. They made it much easier to think and speak, or at least made it faster. “Another dimension. Myfanwy has a dimensional transporter, and she’s been taking us on a whirlwind tour of Bug World and Dragon World and I guess this is Wolf World, and I have dimension sickness so we have to go home before I drop dead.”

“Oh, my God,” Owen muttered. Raising his voice, he said, “That’s all true, so far as it goes. He’s just a bit high. On prescribed medication. On account of the dimension sickness.”

Tosh now looked suspicious. She laid her hand on her gray wolf’s shoulder, where it looked absurdly small and dainty. “Lovelace. Smell them for me.”

The wolf tensed, then leaped down from the catwalk, landing with an immense thud. Myfanwy took flight with a screech. Some huge bird in the rafters let out a loud honk and also took flight. Ianto and Owen both jerked back, then Ianto offered the wolf his hand. The wolf gave them each a long sniff—longer for Owen—then sat back and wagged her tail.

Tosh’s face lit up. She ran down from the catwalk and flung her arms around Owen. He rather awkwardly patted her on the back. When she raised her head, her cheeks were streaked with tears. “I thought I’d never see you again. I mean—I know it’s not you, exactly—but—”

“But I’m _an_ Owen. I get that a lot.”

“Ours died.” She touched his cheek, frowning. “Are you all right?”

“No, love,” he said gently. “No, I’m not.”

The rest of the team was coming in now, accompanied by their wolves. Ianto supposed they’d heard Myfanwy’s screech. And the honk. Jack was flanked by a lean wolf the color of desert sand, Ianto by a fluffy white one, and Gwen by a shaggy black beast that dwarfed them all. 

Ianto had to repress the urge to giggle at the way they all stared at Owen, then at him, then up at Myfanwy (now circling around the ceiling in tandem with what looked like a giant swan), then back to Owen, then back to him, then, incredulously, up at Myfanwy. It was like a merry-go-round of disbelief.

Owen repeated the explanation Ianto had already given, which irritated him until he remembered that only Tosh had heard it. This time he also explained that he was dead and Jack had resurrected him.

“With the Risen Mitten,” said Ianto.

They all stared at him again.

“With the Resurrection Gauntlet,” said Owen. They all looked blank. “Well, if you ever find it, don’t use it. I’m not alive, I’m a walking corpse. I can’t eat or sleep or feel. If I get injured, it never heals. It’s not worth it.”

They looked at each other, giving Ianto the feeling that they knew something he didn’t. But then, everyone must know things he didn’t. It was such a profound insight, he had to share it. “Did you know that all of us are individuals—even you and me, Ianto, even though we’re the same person—and we’re all different, because we all know different things, even if we’re the same person. Because really, we’re not the same person. We’re all different people, even if—”

“Yes, right, we get the picture,” said Owen. “Please stop talking, Ianto. Pet the nice wolf.”

The other Ianto looked down at his wolf. “Rain, can you get through to him?”

Rain—what a pretty name, a fine name, a lovely name for a lovely wolf—trotted up and sniffed him, then laid her head against his thigh. He meant to pat her head, but somehow he ended up tugging her ears. 

He heard rain pattering down on primroses, felt its cool tap on his skin, and smelled it too—even the primroses, which he shouldn’t have been able to smell in the rain. Everything was fresh and clean, as if it had all been born anew. And somehow he knew that all of those sensations were a unified whole. They were Rain’s name, her true-name, her wolf-name.

She licked his hand and gave him his own true-name: fresh-washed linen laid away with lavender, and faintly in the background, the chemical reek of smoke and dust and blood. The smell of an explosion. The smell of Torchwood One. 

Ianto didn’t move, but he felt like he’d been dropped from a height. He could still feel the jittery energy of the stimulant, but it wasn’t carrying him on a tide of free-associations anymore. Nothing like a good jolt of horrific trauma to bring you down from a high.

“Thank you,” he said, and tried to sound like he meant it. 

“What did she do?” Owen asked. “Is she telepathic, like the dragons?”

“Dragons?” Tosh asked eagerly. “You have dragons?”

“No, _we_ don’t,” Ianto said. “We just met some. And yes, she is, but she talks in sensations, not words. Touch, smell—mostly smell. She showed me her name. ‘Rain’ is just for humans to use. It’s really the whole experience of rain on primroses.”

“Good thing our wolf-names are just for the wolves,” said Ianto. “I’d hate to try to shorten mine.”

“Easy,” said Tosh. “Glen, for Glengettie tea.”

 _Tea?_ Ianto thought. 

Rain obligingly gave him the other Ianto’s name: fresh-washed linen laid away with lavender, and the good strong scent of fresh-brewed Glengettie tea.

 _Oh._ He wondered if his other self had ever worked at Torchwood One, or if it hadn’t been destroyed in this world. Maybe Lisa was still alive. Maybe he’d never met her at all.

The other team plunged into wolf introductions, which was a welcome distraction. Especially since Rain, who seemed to have adopted him, added in their wolf names.

“This is Lovelace,” Tosh said, proudly stroking her sleek gray wolf. Now that the other wolves were present to provide perspective, Ianto could see that what he’d initially thought was a gigantic beast was in fact the smallest of the lot. 

_Engine oil, blistering heat, chattering gears,_ sent Rain. It took Ianto a moment to figure that one out, his thoughts fighting through the fog of exhaustion. Lovelace must be from Ada Lovelace, who had worked on the Analytical Engine, a precursor to the computer. No wonder she and Tosh were a match.

Rain promptly sent him Tosh’s wolf-name. _Dust motes dancing in a ray of sunshine, the low hum of a machine, and the complex intensity of a fine espresso._

“Very appropriate,” Ianto murmured. He was talking to Rain, but Tosh beamed. “Thank you! I know it’s a little obvious—I work on analytical engines myself—but Lovelace thinks it fits, and she’s the one who matters.”

“Tosh means, she’s our resident analytical engine genius,” said Jack. He indicated his tall, lean yellow wolf. “And this is First Blood.”

 _A spray of hot blood to the face,_ sent Rain, in full, vivid sensory detail. Ianto flinched back.

“You get used to it,” said the other Ianto.

Jack’s own name was, if anything, even more disconcerting: a warm, spicy perfume that Ianto didn’t recognize, and the coppery taste of blood in the back of the mouth. He was guiltily relieved that this Jack hadn’t made any intimate gestures toward him. If this Jack was sleeping with this Ianto, they were being discreet about it. 

Rain, eagerly jumping ahead, sent Ianto the name of Gwen’s huge black wolf: _The scent of baking bread or biscuits, a pleasant warmth, crackling flames in a hearth, the anticipation of a hunt._

“And this is Crumpet,” said Gwen.

 _“Crumpet?”_ Owen said incredulously. 

“Crumpet,” said Gwen, shooting him a dangerous look. 

_Clean leather, detergent, gunpowder,_ sent Rain. Her introductions complete, she looked up at Ianto and wagged her tail. He petted her soft head, she licked his hand, and then she went back to her own Ianto.

Now that he wasn’t being distracted by those vivid images, he was all aware of his own self. The giddy urge to talk was gone, replaced by an aching, exhausted misery. His legs felt unsteady, so he unobtrusively leaned against the wall. No point worrying Owen. They couldn’t leave for another twenty-four hours anyway. The conversation drifted in and out of his ears like wisps of clouds.

Once again, Owen explained the situation; once again, everyone informed him that they had never heard of any of the things that he desperately needed to know about, but Tosh could search with her analytical engines; once again, Owen would have loved to learn more about the fascinating world he was in, except what he really wanted was to not have his teammate up and die on him, thank you very much.

Ianto was not fooling Owen any. He was leaning against the wall in calculatedly casual pose, but his face was white as that fluffball wolf, his jaw was clenched, his hands were trembling, and one foot was doing a rapid, nervous tap. Owen had half a mind to put him to bed, except with the stimulant still in his system, it would probably make him feel even worse. 

Owen could guess how he felt. He had plenty of experience with being simultaneously hungover, exhausted, and wired. Years of sleep-deprived residency, capped by a 48-hour shift, followed by a drunken binge rather than sleep, followed by a gallon of caffeine to get him through the next 48-hour shift, only this time with a bonus hangover. It was such a wretched state that he always swore to never do it again, until the next week when the cycle repeated. 

In the silence that had fallen while Owen eyed Ianto, he caught everyone staring at him. Again. 

“Are you sure you can’t stay?” Tosh asked wistfully. 

“Sorry, love. I’m really not the same Owen, you know. It wouldn’t be as nice as you’re imagining.” 

From the mulish look on Tosh’s face, she doubted that very much.

“It’s so recent, you see,” Gwen explained. “Our Owen died a month ago. And Steel only went yesterday.”

“His wolf,” Jack explained. “She hung on for so long. Usually they don’t last a day after their partners die. But she was tough.”

“Like him,” said Tosh. “Just wouldn’t give up.”

“They literally die of heartbreak?”

“No,” said Jack. “They go out into the woods and look for something bigger than them. A cave bear or a woolly rhinoceros or an aurochs, something like that.”

“You have cave bears?” Owen asked.

Everyone nodded, as if that was perfectly normal.

“But not pterodactyls.” With an eager gleam in her eyes, Tosh said, “You have dinosaurs?”

“Not usually,” said Owen. “But what happens to the wolves?”

Jack said, “They attack their beast alone, and they fight until it kills them.”

“And you just let her?” Owen exclaimed.

“They bond as puppies,” Jack said. “She barely knew a life without Owen. When a bonded wolf loses their human partner, it’s like if you lost everything that ever mattered to you—everything that makes you Owen.”

“ _I did_.” Owen’s heart couldn’t pound and his face couldn’t flush. He couldn’t see red. But he could still feel anger, even if it wasn’t quite as intense without the physiological part. “She was still alive, wasn’t she? And you lot let her walk off to die!”

“It was a mercy,” said Jack. “Owen would have done the same if Steel had been the one to get in the way of that ice-axe.”

“No, Owen wouldn’t have!” Ianto levered himself off the wall. “Or maybe your Owen would have, but mine wouldn’t. He _didn’t._ ”

“Steel might still be alive,” the other Ianto said suddenly. “She only went yesterday. And she’s such a good fighter, she might have to search hard to find anything that could kill her. We might still be able to track her down.”

Gwen frowned at him. “Ianto, that’s cruel.”

But Tosh was lit up again. “Maybe she could bond with this Owen. And _he_ doesn’t have to go. He said himself, dimension sickness doesn’t affect him.”

This was spinning _way_ out of control. “Look here, I don’t want a wolf, and I’m not going to stay.”

But they’d all started scrambling to get ready the moment Tosh had made her suggestion, pulling on heavy winter gear and collecting weapons. Owen decided not to argue. The important thing was that they look for the wolf, and if she was alive, that they give her another chance at life. If she wouldn’t take it, fine. But he didn’t like how they’d apparently all given up on her without even trying to convince her to live. 

“Owen, take a parka,” said Gwen.

“I’m dead,” he reminded her. “I can’t feel cold.”

“Can you get frostbite?” Tosh asked.

Owen took the parka, and a pair of gloves and boots as well. “Ianto? Want to come, or stay?”

“I’ll come,” said Ianto. 

Owen helped him into his gear. “How’re you doing?” 

“I’ve been better.”

Owen glared up at Myfanwy, who was unrepentantly roosting again beside the giant swan. “You bloody flapping wanker! Can’t you see your provider of gourmet chocolate needs you to go back to the Hub? _Our_ Hub, not Bug Hub or Dragon Hub or Wolf Hub or wherever you’re planning to drop in on next!”

“I think the only word she understood out of that was ‘chocolate,’” said Ianto. 

Sure enough, Myfanwy swooped down, hovered hopefully, then flew back up with an annoyed screech when no chocolate was forthcoming.

“Don’t give her any next time,” Owen suggested. “Maybe she’ll figure out she only gets chocolate at home.”

“Do you know, that’s actually a good idea,” said Ianto. 

“Look, your pterodactyl’s made a friend,” the other Ianto remarked. 

“What’s the swan’s name?” Ianto asked.

“Oh, we haven’t named it,” said the other Ianto. “A window got broken in a hailstorm, and it flew in and didn’t leave. We meant to shoo it out, but no one’s gotten around to it yet.”

“You could keep it,” Ianto suggested. “Give it a good Welsh name. We quite like having Myfanwy around.”

Jack hit a button, and a door raised creakily, revealing a huge garage. It contained a small, armored hover-bus, extremely roomy for its size, with plenty of padded benches where a man could lie down. Or, presumably, a wolf. 

Owen had to help Ianto into it. He refused to lie down, so Owen and he sat together with Owen moving to let him lean against him. He wasn’t feverish yet, but Owen patted the extra meds he’d stashed in his pocket just in case. 

Bloody Ianto! Why hadn’t he told Owen anything when they were in the one place where anyone seemed to know anything about dimension sickness? He bet Cicada Jack could have at least told him how long Ianto could hold up. Could he take one more day? Two more? 

Jack pulled out of the Hub. In this dimension, Cardiff was a small town built into an ancient forest, full of immense gnarled trees like something out of a book of fairy tales. The houses and shops seemed dwarfed by the trees, their lights shining like the desperate flicker of a lost man’s last match. 

There didn’t seem to be any roads; the few cars hovered over the snow. Owen couldn’t tell how deep it really was. The doors and windows of buildings might have been placed with the idea that the snow was always three meters deep. 

“Are they going to sniff for her?” Owen asked uneasily. He didn’t fancy the idea of getting out of the bus full of furry panting wolves, and stepping out into a forest full of things that could eat him like a chicken nugget. 

“No, they can sense each other,” said Gwen. “If she’s still alive, eventually we’ll come within range, and then they can track her.”

Owen waited for them to head into the deep, uninhabited forest, but they kept driving around the general Cardiff area. Finally, he said, “Are you really looking for her? There’s hardly going to be woolly rhinoceroses wandering around Yummy Kebabs!”

They all looked at him until he got the idea. “Oh.”

“There’s a cave hyena trail,” Tosh said helpfully. “See where it jumped over the fence of the schoolyard? And there, see those tracks where it picks up again on the roof?”

“Ah,” said Ianto.

Owen _definitely_ wasn’t staying.

“Crumpet’s got her trail!” Gwen exclaimed. 

Once again, Owen could not believe that Gwen’s great shaggy beast was named _Crumpet_. Trust Gwen. 

All the wolves started barking and howling excitedly. Jack swung the bus around, floating over the endless snow, passing a few clubs that didn’t seem to have anyone in them and people darting in and out of a grocer’s like something might eat them if they lingered. Which was probably true.

“This is giving me a proper appreciation for our Cardiff,” said Owen. “You can get a kebab without becoming one.”

Ianto gave him a weak smile. 

“You need any more of… anything? How’s your head?”

“Yeah,” said Ianto. “Maybe something for that.”

Owen gave him two pills washed down with coffee from the other Ianto’s thermos. 

_Bloody pterodactyl,_ he thought again. 

Everyone exclaimed at once. “Here, here! She’s here!”

And then they all turned to Owen. 

“Go on,” said Jack. “You’re the one who wanted to get her.”

“Where is she? I don’t want to walk up to some random wolf and get my face eaten.”

Jack pointed. “In that hollow tree. She might not come, but she won’t hurt you.”

“Good luck,” said Ianto.

Sighing, Owen climbed out of the hovercraft. He immediately sank into snow that was nearly knee-deep. Bloody nature. At least he couldn’t feel the cold. He trudged on, wishing he’d never proposed the entire expedition. Exactly how was he supposed to talk a suicidal wolf off a ledge? None of the Torchwood wolves had said a word to him. 

He reached the hollow tree Jack had indicated and crouched down. Now the snow was up to his waist, goodie. A pair of baleful yellow eyes stared out at him. They seemed to be floating in midair. 

“Hello,” he said, feeling like an idiot. “Are you Steel? I just want a word with you.”

The eyes didn’t move or blink. 

Drawing on vague memories of how to interact with dogs, Owen dragged off one glove and offered his bare hand for a lick, half-convinced it would immediately be bitten off. 

He smelled sun-warmed steel, and saw the blinding spark of light when sunlight strikes polished metal. Owen drank it in like a man dying of thirst. Scent. Lovely, lovely scent. And impossibly vivid scent, too. Not ordinary steel, but the platonic ideal of steel… 

Of course. That was her name.

“I’m Owen,” he said. “Not your Owen. But _a_ Owen.”

She sent him another name, all in those overwhelmingly sensory images. The touch of cold metal, the sharp scent of grain alcohol, the near-painless shock of a slice from a very keen edge, and then the coppery rush of blood. Owen recognized the sequence: a slip with a scalpel. 

He’d experienced all that when he’d been alive, but never so intensely. The world in her mind was more real than reality itself. Or maybe that was just what it was like to be a wolf. 

The rush of sensations faded away, and he was able to understand what they meant. She was telling him his own name. 

“No blood now, love,” said Owen. That stitched-up wound would never heal.

A low growl rumbled from the hollow. 

“I stand corrected. That was _your_ Owen. Feels weird to be saying this, considering who I am, but… I’m sorry. Life can be a right bitch sometimes. Er. Sorry. Again. See, that’s what I’m like. Always saying the wrong thing. The thing that hurts, at the worst possible moment…”

Steel stepped out into the snow. She was black as a hole cut out in the world, except for her yellow eyes. She sniffed at him, very thoroughly, and he petted her. He couldn’t feel her fur, but he could stroke it. Like he couldn’t feel Ianto’s fever, but he could still cool his skin.

“I know I’m not him. I’m not offering myself as a substitute. I’m here to say you don’t have to kill yourself just because that’s the normal thing to do around here. Or because you lost everything. I lost everything, and I’m still here. Because it turned out, I hadn’t really. I lost a lot, but I kept some things. I even found some new things. I can’t eat or sleep or feel, but I’m still a doctor. I can still fight like hell to keep my friends alive. I can still open doors with knobs on.” 

Owen laughed, and Steel gave a huff that was maybe her way of laughing.

“I don’t know what you have that you care about. Your job at Torchwood, maybe. Your team. A nice bowl of kibble.”

She gave a disgusted snort. Owen tasted raw meat, juicy and bloody. Delicious. He’d always enjoyed a bit of carpaccio. But this was so vivid—not just flavor, but touch and smell. The meat tore between his teeth. 

“Okay, meat then. You’ve still got that. You don’t need to think of it as, ‘Is it worth living out a life that’s generally horrible for the sake of a few minutes of meat?’ Think of it as, ‘Tonight I’ll have meat,’ and hold that in your mind.”

Unexpectedly, Steel climbed into his lap. Owen nearly went over backward in the snow. But he recovered his balance, then closed his arms around her and held her. She gave a soft whine and rested her head on his shoulder.

“There you go,” he said. “Focus on the meat. Drippy and warm, just the way you like it. You have that. You still have that.”

Steel sent him a new set of images. The touch of cold metal, the lingering flavor of a whiskey sour, heat, music, sweat, and blood: first aid at a club.

 _Me,_ he realized. _That’s me_.

And then, _She’s telling me she still has me._

He sat there in the snow, holding her tight and thinking of all the reasons that everything would go horribly wrong. But he’d just told her that it was enough that tonight she’d have meat. 

“Come on, love. Meat’s waiting.”

She followed him back to the hover-bus and climbed inside. 

“I knew it!” exclaimed the other Ianto.

The bus erupted in a cacophony of excited barks and chatter. Everyone was congratulating Owen and petting or licking Steel. Owen stripped off his presumably ice-cold winter gear before he went to sit by Ianto. Steel followed him, then sprawled at both their feet in a contented-looking heap.

“She’s beautiful,” said Ianto.

“Yeah. She is.”

It was absurd, but Owen loved her already. He supposed that was how it went. See a puppy in a shop window, fall in love. Talk a telepathic wolf out of committing an epic suicide because a different version of you got stabbed with an ice axe, fall in love.

He tried not to think that there would be some kind of cosmic scales at work, and that if Steel was saved, then Ianto would die. Life didn’t really work that way. Random shit happened randomly. 

Everyone could die. Everyone could live.

Back in the Hub, Myfanwy was still buddying up with her friend the giant swan. She swooped down and screeched, the swan swooped down and honked, and then they both flapped off, happy as could be. 

“Bloody, _bloody_ pterodactyl,” Owen said with feeling. He shouted after her, “No chocolate for you till you get us back!”

Steel pointed her nose in the direction they’d flown off in and gave a ferocious growl. 

Owen petted her. “Good girl. You can eat her if she doesn’t take us home tomorrow. Though she’d probably give you indigestion.”

Steel panted happily and sent him a fully sensory image of spitting out a rubbery pterodactyl wing.

“Yecch,” said Owen.

“No eating Myfanwy,” said Ianto. Generously, he said, “You can have the swan.”

He was flushed and sweating again, his breath coming in quick shallow sips. Owen half-carried him to the infirmary, where he dosed him with more symptomatic treatments that made him feel better, but didn’t do a damn thing for the root cause. 

The team and their wolves crowded into the infirmary, which apparently doubled as a veterinary hospital. 

“Was the other Owen a vet?” Owen asked.

“No,” said Jack. “Suzie was.”

“Poor Suzie,” said Gwen. “I never really got to know her. She got trampled by an elk around the same time I was recruited.”

Rain padded up to Ianto’s bed, scrambled up on it, and lay down beside him, nuzzling him. He snuggled into her and closed his eyes. 

“Tosh?” Owen asked. “Want to pull another all-nighter?”

Tosh was unsurprisingly up for it, glowing with pleasure at just being around Owen. He couldn’t help wondering if his for-real dead counterpart had been a lot nicer than him. Then again, his Tosh had stuck with him no matter how much of a twat he’d been and no matter how hard he’d tried to push him away. Maybe Tosh was just like that. 

Maybe Tosh was just like that about him. 

This Tosh didn’t seem to have a life apart from her team, but it was sounding like the whole team was that way. Gwen wasn’t seeing anyone. Jack only had one-night stands. They had each other and their wolves, and that was enough for them. No outsiders allowed. They’d let the swan stay, but they hadn’t given it a name.

Steel sent him the warm coziness of people and wolves piled together in front of a fire: _pack_.

And there was another bloody impossible dilemma. He couldn’t drag Steel away from her pack. He couldn’t stay and abandon Ianto. He had to hope that the pack and meat would be enough for her, even without him. 

_The touch of cold metal, the lingering flavor of a whiskey sour, heat, music, sweat, and blood._

Owen sighed. “Bloody wolf.”

To his utter lack of surprise, Tosh did not turn up any miracles. In the morning, he gave Ianto a more carefully calibrated dose of the stimulant. Ianto woke slowly, groaning and rubbing his head. 

“Shall I help you take a shower?” Owen asked. “I’ll even straighten your silly vest for you.”

Ianto winced. “No. I’m fine.”

A stab of fear went straight through Owen’s heart. Ianto not caring what he looked like, not caring if he was even clean…

 _We_ have _to get home._

Owen helped him dress, vest and all. Even if Ianto didn’t think it was worth the effort, maybe having it on would make him feel better. He helped Ianto into the basketball court, where the team and their wolves were waiting. 

Owen held up the chocolate bar. Myfanwy swooped down and snatched at it, but Owen yanked it away. “ _After_ you take us home.”

Myfanwy screeched angrily. The swan gave a loud honk. Crumpet growled. Ianto winced.

Then, as Myfanwy and the swan continued their earsplitting chorus, Ianto’s eyes lit with more than fever. “Myfanwy is lonely.”

“Well, we can’t take a giant extinct swan with us,” Owen pointed out.

“Of course we can,” said Ianto. “I took a pterodactyl to the Hub.” 

“You can have it,” said Jack. 

“Please,” added Gwen. “The honking annoys Crumpet.”

“It’ll be fine,” said Ianto. “Animals don’t get dimension sickness. And we have to take it, or Myfanwy won’t go back. That’s why she’s been dragging us all over: she wanted a friend. She found the moth. Then the dragons. Now the swan.”

“Oh!” Owen eyed the swan, which flapped its wings and honked again. “Well… I guess it’s better than the moth. And the dragons were way out of her league.”

Steel planted herself at his feet, gazing up into his eyes. Her meaning was clear: if the swan can come, I can come.

“Do you definitely want to?”

She wagged her tail enthusiastically.

“What about your pack?”

_Owen and Ianto and Steel, all sprawled together in a cozy pile._

“Then come along,” said Owen. “I’ll get you all the meat you want.”

 _Cold metal, cocktail, perfume, blood:_ I want _you._

“I wish you and Steel would stay,” Tosh said. “Are you sure you don’t want to? If you’re definitely going home, then your Ianto will be fine.” 

“I don’t belong here. And I can’t just trust that the bloody pterodactyl really will take us home.” Owen hesitated, then said, “And there’s somewhere I do belong. And people who would miss me.”

“ _We_ miss you,” said the other Ianto.

Ianto looked at his counterpart. “Dibs.”

“Think of it this way,” Owen said. “I’m going home. If you miss me— _me_ , not your Owen—at least you know I’m… Well, not alive technically, but…”

Tosh nodded, her eyes bright with tears. “Yes. I’ll think of that.”

Jack pointed upward. “Get her down!”

Myfanwy’s harness was glowing. Owen again held up the chocolate bar. “Come and get it!”

She swooped down, screeching. The giant swan followed. Owen lunged and caught it by the leg. It honked and kicked out, catching him a blow in the thigh that would probably leave a permanent bruise. Ianto grabbed Myfanwy’s harness with one hand and threw himself on top of Owen and the swan. 

“Steel!” Owen yelled. “Hurry!”

The wolf leaped into the fray, knocking them all to the ground. 

Everything went white. 

And then they were on a familiar floor in a pile of thrashing legs and beaks and wings and paws. Myfanwy separated herself first, screeching furiously. She plucked the chocolate bar from Owen’s hand and flapped away with it, followed by the honking swan.

They were once again in the Hub, this time in the main area. Jack and Tosh and Gwen were standing in the exact positions they’d been in when Owen and Ianto and Myfanwy had vanished. Apparently no time at all had passed. Even the pizza boxes were still there.

Steel loped over to the pizza, nosed it, and inhaled a slice. For the first time since he’d died, Owen experienced pizza. And he experienced it as Steel did, with her far more sensitive tastebuds. It was meat feast, hot and dripping with cheese, spicy and savory with pepperoni and ham and sausage. He could taste every element in the sauce, down to the chemical tang of the preservatives. The crust was limp and chewy. It was glorious. 

“Hey!” Gwen yelled. “A wolf just ate my pizza!”

“ _Cygnus falconeri,_ ” said Tosh, peering at the circling, honking swan. “They’re extinct.”

Jack dropped down on his knees beside Ianto, anxiously stroking his hair. Ianto reached up a trembling hand and laid it over Jack’s, clutching it like a lifeline. “What happened?”

“Dimension sickness,” said Owen. And, savoring the words and the truth in them, “He’ll be fine.” 

Steel, wagging her tail hard enough to stir up a breeze that sent every stray paper flying, excitedly sent him the names of his teammates.

Ianto: _Fresh-washed linen laid away with lavender, and faintly in the background, the chemical reek of smoke and dust and blood._

Jack: _A dizzying perfume, a flash of lightning, the smell of ozone, and the coppery taste of blood._

Gwen: _The buttery texture and distinctive smell of old battered leather, lemon soap, and gunpowder._

Tosh: _Snow falling in clear pale light, the low hum of a machine, and the taste of espresso._

Owen couldn’t wait to tell them what they all smelled like. He bet that Jack knew exactly what the perfume was and could tell him, if he described it well enough. 

Once again, Owen ended up in the infirmary, sitting by Ianto’s bed while he explained everything to the Torchwood team. But this time it was _his_ team. 

“So now we have a wolf,” said Gwen. “Of course we do.”

“She’s a dire wolf,” said Tosh, petting her. “What a beauty!”

“And a swan,” said Jack. A distant honking reached them. “Does it ever shut up?”

“I think it’s just excited to have a friend,” said Ianto. “And a new home.”

“New people to annoy,” said Owen.

Ignoring him, Ianto said, “I’m naming it Enfys. Works for a boy or a girl.”

“How about ‘Bloody Loud Nuisance?’” Owen suggested.

“I think Enfys is a lovely name,” said Tosh. “And I _love_ my wolf-name.”

“My wolf-name perfume sounds like Jean Patou’s ‘Joy,’” said Jack. “The most expensive on Earth. Not the most expensive in the galaxy, of course.”

Owen settled back as everyone went on talking. The color was returning to Ianto’s cheeks, and he reached up in a vain attempt to smooth his tousled hair.

“Should’ve taken that shower when I offered,” said Owen. “Whew, Steel can smell you from here!”

“Of course she can, she’s a wolf,” said Ianto with dignity.

“ _I’ll_ help you take a shower,” said Jack. “But of course Owen’s welcome, if he _really wants it._ ”

Owen, who had left out the part about the orgy—he’d let Ianto tell Jack in play-by-play detail—caught Ianto’s eye and said, “You’d be surprised.”

“I don’t understand how the Apt thing works,” said Tosh. “How can you draw a sword from a sheath but not turn a doorknob? They both involve moving parts. Is it based on what they culturally define as a ‘machine?’ And you can’t make a sword without mining and smelting and forging…”

“Someone needs to remember to take that harness off Myfanwy, before she takes it into her mind to go on road trip with her new pal,” said Gwen.

“A honeymoon, you mean,” said Jack. 

“They’re different species,” said Gwen. “Oh, right. I’m talking to Mr. ‘Let me tell you about the time I had a threesome with the squid queen of Antares and a very handsome sheep.’”

“Tosh, can you look up if it’s safe for wolves to eat curry?” Ianto asked. 

“Oh, yes!” Tosh said. “We could order Owen’s favorite. I’m sure she could have a couple bites, at least.”

“Think I’ll take that shower now.” Ianto stood up, a little shakily, with a hand on Jack’s arm. “Hey, Owen? Open that door for us, will you?”

Owen laughed and held it open for them. 

_Owen and Ianto and Steel and Gwen and Tosh and Jack_ , sent Steel. 

Pack.


End file.
